


this time i might just disappear

by northyard



Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fix-It of Sorts, Original Character(s), Original Fiction, Other, Self-Indulgent
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-11
Updated: 2020-03-30
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:34:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 22,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22204933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/northyard/pseuds/northyard
Summary: A swipe. A sharp, stinging sensation, leeching across his skin--and then blood wells up around the edges of the knife, pooling quickly in his shaking hand. He sets down the knife and holds his hand out in front of him. He clenches his fingers into a fist--and when the blood from his palm drops onto the hot coals, a low murmur echoes through the crowd of students.The head of the academy pauses, then turns to face the crowd. Her voice is tight. “Erik Boone,” she says. “Ghostwalker.”- or -A collection of works about my Borderlands OC, Erik Boone.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 5





	1. trophy hunting

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [A Posse Ad Esse](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21578989) by [iaspis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/iaspis/pseuds/iaspis). 



> just needed a place to put all of this <3 thanks for reading

Erik’s knife feels welcome in his hands. But then again, the dagger has always felt like an extension of himself--a mere lengthening of his arm, just another part of his body to be used as a weapon. It’s the familiar heft of sharpened black iron, the hilt and grip wound with smooth, supple white leather. It’s the way it balances across his palm--evenly weighted, perfect for throwing should he ever need to do so. It had been a gift from his mother before he’d left for the academy. In his young hands, the dagger had been heavy and clumsy. But now--it’s lethal. A weapon fit for only the finest warrior.

And Erik certainly feels like one. 

A fog had rolled through the mountains of Artemis the morning of the final test. Dew had collected on the grass that shifted gently in the breeze of the day, and when the sun finally burned off the condensation the dawn became awash with a different sort of quiet--the hush of nature, in its element, in the peace of quiet oblivion. Birds chirping in their trees, blissfully unaware of the stress weighing on Erik’s shoulders. And the wolves in the mountains--barking, howling, chattering at one another, greeting one another in the light of the new day.

It should have been wonderful. To rise with the sun, to run his fingers through the wet blades of grass and feel the grounds of Artemis as the Saints had intended it. But there is only the sense of unease--of powerlessness in the face of pressure. 

The Aventine caves beneath the surface of Artemis yawn wide like gaping mouths. They wind, twist, and groan as gentle breezes from above sweep through like air over the mouth of a bottle. Erik has been here countless times--on quiet outings alone, during parties with classmates, on training missions with Marcel. But this time is different. He’s alone, certainly, with only his dagger and the clothes on his back. The cave system is vast and formidable. Erik has never ventured farther than the first hundred meters or so into the system just outside the Academy, the tunnels and backways so often used for training exercises. This time, Erik had been instructed to venture as deep as he may dare--and to bring back a trophy for his troubles.

The term trophy hadn’t truly been specified. Was it money? A rare weapon? A hunk of eridium, hacked off the wall with all the practiced expertise of a miner? Erik isn’t sure. He turns his dagger in his hand, a comfort even now. The supple white leather of the hilt is indented with the shape of his fingers--held so often, in the same place each time, the knife had almost molded to his grip. Long, nimble fingers, large palms. The hands of a piano player, a former professor had once told him. Not the hands of a warrior. Not the hands of a fighter.

He sucks in a breath. There’s no use standing here like a lemon when he could be on his way to graduation, so he begins his trek into the caves.

They’re beautiful, to say the least. 

Wide, spacious, lined with stalactites and stalagmites and those winding pathways cut by ancient rivers. Erik can hear things squeaking and chittering in the darkness above his head, and after a moment of thought, he reaches into his pocket and produces a starstone. It’s about the size of a bar of soap, heavy and silver in his palm. When he gives it a shake, it begins to glow--an easy purplish-gray shade, casting watery light across the walls in front of him. It’s not much of a flashlight, but it’s the only thing he has. 

Erik doesn’t know what he should be looking for. A trophy, he thinks. Not very specific, not very concise. His mouth hardens into a grim line as he glances around himself, eyeing the glowing veins of eridium spidering up the walls of the cave. On Nona, this place would have long since been decimated. He wonders, often, if Orcus even knows that Artemis exists. He’s sure they do--the guild is certainly big enough a presence to hold some sway over the minds and culture of the galaxy around them. Maybe it’s the guild’s presence that holds off the Orcus federation--maybe it’s the only reason why these caves aren’t swarming with Artemisian children, hauling machinery too big for their small hands and faces smeared with black soot. 

He reaches out, presses fingertips to the eridium vein. It seems to pulse and buzz under his touch, like a cat waking from a nap. Erik pulls his hand back. The mountains of Artemis have always been rumored to be… alive, in their own way. Perhaps this is where those stories began--the heartbeat in the walls of the caves, humming with a power of their own. 

But this can’t be his trophy, he thinks, beginning to walk again. Eridium isn’t rare enough here to be considered a trophy. He’d be laughed at if a hunk of glowing purple was all he returned with. Not if his classmates come back with heaps of money or warlord heads or mountainous stacks of weapons. He’s got to find something better--something more. He’s got an idea, but it’s not… well, he doesn’t want to do it, really.

But for the sake of graduating? He will. For the sake of proving himself as a bounty hunter, for the sake of… proving everyone wrong. That he  _ can _ graduate, immigrant or not. Artemisian or not. That just because his blood was stained with the decay of Nona’s eridium mines didn’t mean he couldn’t outfight, outrun, outwit the dozens of Artemisians vying for a spot in the graduating class. Artemis had never limited the school to native students--but, then again, native students were always the only students to ever advance to the final round of initiation.

There are many people who would die before they’d see Erik standing on the initiation stage, shoulders held proudly as he graduates alongside classmates who would want nothing to do with him. It’s about proving them wrong. It’s about proving that he deserves a spot on that stage, regardless of his blood. 

He can’t half-ass this one. He doesn’t half-ass anything, really, considering he works twice as hard for half as much in his everyday life. The academy takes, and takes, and takes. And Erik will continue to give, as long as he has breath in his lungs. He owes it to himself. He owes it to his mother, his father, his little sister. He owes it to the family he left behind and to whatever family he might have in the future. 

The caves are winding and vast, and soon Erik can no longer discern exactly where he is. He’s got a good sense of direction--better than most, really--but navigating the caves are like a fly picking its way through a spiderweb. Pulled in every which way, drawn to one light or another. When the glow of eridium fades behind him Erik gives his starstone another vigorous shake and the silvery-purple light between his fingers sputters, almost indignantly, as if he’d woken it from a nap. 

Erik can hear the vague sound of water dripping somewhere in the cave system. He finally decides on a left turn, into a tunnel with a vaulting ceiling and carved from damp gray stone. He runs his fingertips along the wall to his right, even his own breathing becoming deafening in the eerie silence of the cave. There’s something otherworldly about it--something disconnected from the outside world, as if Erik has stepped off Artemis completely and is exploring a new planet on his own. The tunnel widens near the middle, opening into a small room containing a preternaturally serene pool of milky white water. Or, at least, he  _ hopes _ it’s water. 

Something chitters above his head, sounding suspiciously like a bat. Or… at least, something similar to a bat. Erik has never been afraid of the creatures that lurk in the dark, but--the dark itself? That’s another story.

Sweat rolls down his temple as he shakes the starstone again to keep it from going out. If he loses his light, he knows he might just lose his mind with it. Or, at the very least, his heart will jump into a frenzy fast enough to beat its way right out of his chest. His years in the Nonan mines had taught him everything he needed to know about fearing the dark. Fearing the odd white glint of eridium reflecting off of Orcus uniforms as soldiers melt out of the shadows, whips and chains in hand to goad the children on in their work. 

Erik grits his teeth. He combs his fingers through his white-blonde hair, then scrubs his hand across the sharp angle of his clenched jaw. The starstone in his hand is smooth and pulsing with energy, and he gives it one last shake before turning down another cutaway in the tunnel. There’s a different sort of scent here. Like--burning flesh.

Not pleasant. 

The temperature in the tunnel seems to have risen quite significantly and Erik tugs at the collar of his shirt, suddenly feeling quite claustrophobic. He turns sideways to squeeze through a narrow passageway that comes to an arch with a disconnect from the ceiling and wrinkles his nose as the smell of fire and smoke grows stronger. 

After a moment, he stops to push his sleeves up. Sweat pools in the hollows of his collarbones and he swipes the back of his hand across his face, his fingers coming away damp with perspiration. For a cave with no natural light, it’s  _ hot _ \--and once he passes through a final narrow passageway, Erik doesn’t have a hard time figuring out why. 

He’s heard stories of Old Tom. People who ventured into these caves didn’t always venture back out--and the women of Drogo Pass would often gossip and share stories of the creature of the Aventines. Warriors who went in to face him didn’t often come back sane--if at all. Staring at the creature before him, Erik isn’t struggling to understand why. 

The skag is gargantuan. Even curled up on the groud where he is, he easily dwarfs Erik and for one dumbfounded moment Erik wonders how the skag even leaves his cave to eat. He couldn’t possibly squeeze himself down those narrow corridors that Erik himself had barely fit through, and Erik isn’t that bulky to begin with. 

Every cell in Erik’s body seems to have frozen. Erik’s found his trophy, all right, but all he’s got is a knife and a prayer. What could this skag give him that Erik wouldn’t lose his life in the process of getting? He almost wants to back away and find another tunnel and forget he’d ever seen this. The skag is asleep, his side rising and falling in an almost relaxing cadence as he breathes. His skin is cracked and molten, glowing with orange light. 

The burning smell, Erik realizes. It’s not a fire, but the skag himself. Old Tom, the terror of the Aventine caves. The skag’s skin looks similar to any other skag that Erik has seen. Cracked, scaly, shaped in mismatched circles and ovaline protrusions that almost remind Erik of the hot, split-apart canyon floors of southern Artemis. The skag is black, from head to toe, down to his very claws and the massive horns that sprout like trees from his shoulders. But the crevices between each scale on the skag’s flank glow a sickly sort of orange--fire sputtering from Old Tom’s back in loud whipcracks and snaps, like sunbursts in action. Flames roll down the skag’s back, hot and bright and uncomfortably warm. The hair on the back of Erik’s neck stands on end and he can practically feel his sweat glands working to keep up, his shirt collar dampening as he grows warmer and warmer.

Saints, it feels like an  _ oven _ in here. 

Erik  _ really  _ doesn’t want to provoke Old Tom. In fact, he’d rather do anything else. Walk on his hands across hot coals, maybe, or perhaps go to sleep on a bed of spikes. Maybe even dip his toes into a pool of starving piranhas.  _ Anything _ but this.

But Erik doesn’t give himself much of a choice. 

The skag is fast asleep, from what Erik can tell. He’s rumbling with each breath, as though his lungs are simply passing air over the mouths of glass bottles. He groans and snores. It’s surprisingly mundane, all things considered. His feet twitch as he dreams, and even from where Erik is standing, it’s clear that the skag’s eyes are flicking back and forth beneath closed eyelids. Dreaming indeed.

The fire burns and cracks and the air around him swims with heatwaves. Anyone in their right mind--and body--would be sweating. And Erik  _ certainly  _ is. It seems as though in a matter of seconds his hands have gone from dry to clammy to absolutely drenched. Not out of fear, or upset, but because by the moment Old Tom seems to be growing hotter and hotter. The flames flickering under the armored plating of the skag’s back turn from red to orange to blue to white as the skag seems to grow more immersed in whatever dream he’s having, and in seconds the cavern seems practically too hot to stand. 

Erik decides in what seems like a split second to abandon the quest and backtrack his way out of the cave. But his hands are drenched, and when he gives the starstone a shake, it slips--and clatters to the ground in a deafening turn of events. 

It could  _ not _ have been louder, Erik thinks. The starstone bounces once, twice, and then tumbles to a stop a few meters from the sleeping skag. 

Well, the  _ formerly _ sleeping skag. 

Old Tom wakes with a snort. His head rises from where it had been nestled between two front paws, eyes rolling forward as he’s snapped from whatever dream he’d been having. Erik freezes, as if it will help. It doesn’t.

The skag spots him almost immediately, clambering to his massive paws in a matter of moments. He bends down, then tosses his head back in a roar, blasting fire from what seems like every pore of his cracked skin. He becomes a supernova, and Erik is surprised that his eyebrows haven’t singed off yet. 

And then the skag begins to charge. Defending his territory, yadda yadda yadda. Erik does  _ not _ want to spend his morning becoming skag chow, so he does the only thing he can think to do. He turns and runs. 

Tearing ass, as some might say, Erik squeezes back down the narrow passageway, slowing only when he thinks that Old Tom can’t follow. He ought to stop speaking too soon. 

Clearly, Erik had misjudged the size of the passageway. Because Old Tom might be wide, but he’s practically just as tall. He...steps over the lowered archway, bellowing as he does so. Erik lets out a yelp and turns, squeezing himself through the second stretch of narrow passage. Old Tom is close behind--Erik knows this because there isn’t an inch of clothing on his body that’s still dry, and Erik is sure by now that he smells something close to a foot soaked in onion juice for a few days or so. 

Not great.

He unsheathes his knife, because it’s the only thing he has, and once he’s out of the narrow corridor, he turns to face the advancing skag, mouth pulled into a grim sort of expression. If this is to be his last stand, he might as well go down fighting. A knife won’t be nearly enough to do the sort of damage to kill this skag, much less cut away a trophy to take back to the guild. 

A quick prayer as he spins his dagger in his hand--to Saint Leon, to Saint Daniel, to Saint Alana. A certain stillness creeps through his veins as he watches the skag thunder towards him. Tom lets out a roar, then lunges. Erik waits, and waits, and then--

Just as the skag’s claws swipe the air above Erik’s head, he drops into a crouch, sliding beneath the skag’s belly. His knife goes  _ up _ \--and he lets out a sharp breath as it strikes true, sinking to the hilt in the soft tissue of Old Tom’s underbelly. The skag’s momentum does all the work  _ for _ Erik. Old Tom lets out an agonized howl and he flops onto his side, rolling away from Erik in a flurry of sputtering flames. 

Erik’s sleeve is starting to burn, so he pats it out and gets back on his feet, unable to celebrate his small victory long enough to savor it. Old Tom is hurt, but not fatally--and now, he’s angry. Angrier than before, at least. Erik turns once more and begins to run, letting his spectacular navigation skills take over. His boots pound against the slick floors of the cavern as he turns down corridor after corridor, doing his best not to slip and bust his head open before he can get away from the skag. 

The skag is keeping up, certainly. Old Tom is still howling and barking and chattering, and Erik can feel the heat grabbing at his neck with desperate fingers. Erik’s lungs burn and he finds himself practically choking on the sweltering air, very nearly unable to keep his eyes open for fear of them drying out. 

Funny how his mother used to tell him not to run with scissors in his hand, and yet now, he’s running sprints with an unsheathed, freshly sharpened dagger. It’s an odd thought to have in this moment, but he has it regardless as his eyes search for new routes and turns to take in retreat from the skag on his tail. 

Finally, he finds what he’s been looking for--just as he can smell the hair on his arms begin to singe, he throws himself into that pool of milky white water he’d glimpsed on his way into the cave. He stumbles, splashing like a child, gasping as the cool water washes over his fevered skin. On his hands and knees he scrambles into the center of the pool, and as he turns in the water, he can’t fight the terror on his face when he sees that the water hadn’t deterred the skag at all. Old Tom pounds into the water behind Erik, still roaring and bellowing and baying like a hound.

The water isn’t quite deep, only coming up to Erik’s waist, but it’s enough to drench Old Tom’s legs. Steam billows from the skag’s body in clouds as thick and heavy as fog and in what seems like seconds the small room the two of them are in is shrouded in mist. Erik can’t see his hand if he waves it in front of his face, and his breath catches as the rest of Tom’s fire winks out. The cavern dims save for the soft glow of the embers of Tom’s skin, and Erik quietly thanks whatever Saint had granted him this reprieve. Thank the  _ saints _ that skags don’t have a good sense of smell. 

Disappearing, Erik thinks. He quite likes that. In its own way, the fog and the steam is a weapon. He rises from the water and creeps towards the shifting form of Tom, focused on the glowing lines of orange light cutting through the mist. He draws nearer and nearer, uncomfortably aware of how  _ damp _ he is, and it’s not until he’s approaching Tom’s backside that he lets himself breathe, every inch of his skin alight with nervous energy.

The skag is unaware of Erik’s presence. He’s turning his head from side to side, jaws open in a howl as he shrieks in the darkness of the cave. His feet stomp in the water, splashing, and Erik can only guess that the skag is uncomfortable--his fire is out, of course, and it’s not coming back thanks to the water. 

Blood is pooling beneath Old Tom’s belly where Erik had cut him minutes before. Erik moves slowly, quietly, carefully--his heart thundering in his chest, barely daring to take shuffling steps lest he disturb the water around Tom. In moments, Erik is beneath the skag once more, drenched in sweat and cave water and whatever else he’s managed to land himself in. 

Tom is breathing hard, head swinging up and down, side to side, nostrils flaring. Erik almost feels bad. 

He says a prayer. To whom, he’s not sure. For safe passage to the next life, he thinks. For peace and forgiveness. 

He grips his knife, and then winds his arm back.

The knife plunges into Old Tom’s heart. 

The skag shrieks with pain, rearing onto his hind legs. Erik twists the knife, driving it deeper. The skag’s front limbs splay outwards in a last gasp for survival and much to his chagrin, Erik can’t duck out of the way in time to avoid the blow. A razor sharp dewclaw swipes Erik’s cheek, knocking his head back with the force of the skag’s last stand. Erik lets out a groan and the skag himself bellows one last time but it dies in the silence of the cave as the fire of Tom’s skin finally sputters out and he falls, lifeless, onto his side. 

The pool roars as the milky white water is displaced and Erik has to stand up and scramble away to keep from being crushed by the weight of the skag. He’s knocked onto his ass by a wave of water, but he gets back up, gasping with exertion. His arms, legs, lungs hurt.  _ Everything _ hurts. His cheek stings, and he can bet that the dampness pooling down his neck isn’t water but blood, spilling from the gash opened just beneath his eye. Any closer and he’d be blind, he thinks. 

When the water settles and Erik can catch his breath, he clambers over to the skag and pulls his knife out of Tom’s belly with a sickening  _ squelch _ . He wipes the blade on the thigh of his pants and frowns, unsure of where to start. With his free hand he reaches out to touch the skag’s shoulder, unsure of himself. 

A legendary creature, he thinks. Felled with a knife and some water. Erik supposes he ought to be proud of himself, but the only thing he feels is remorse. He runs his fingers over the skag’s throat, almost sad. Old Tom, he thinks. Erik’s just killed  _ Old Tom _ . 

He looks into the skag’s glassy eyes, at the way his tongue lolls out of his mouth without jaw strength to hold it in. The awkward skew of the skag’s legs, tossed every which way in the fall. Erik closes his eyes once more and presses his fingers to the skag’s face as he utters a prayer of forgiveness and thanks to whatever Saints might be listening. 

Another moment and he opens his eyes, fingers tightening around the blade of his knife. 

Trophy, he thinks. Trophy.

* * *

The guild's council room is pristine. White marble floors, white walls, white _everything_. The color of purity, or so it would seem. The janitorial staff certainly have their work cut out for them when it comes to keeping everything _clean_. Jarrod Lawson is seated with his colleagues at the head of the council table, chatting idly, discussing the odds and ends to finish wrapping up for the Drogo Pass graduation.

He's fiddling with a ballpoint pen, wondering when his lunch break will be, when he practically jumps out of his skin as the door to the council room bangs open. 

A tall young man limps in, covered head to toe in--well, everything. From the hips down he's caked with mud, from the waist up he's wet, and from the shoulders up he's got a fair amount of blood smeared across his face and neck. He's dripping on the floor, tracking what seems like the entirety of the Artemisian mountains into the council room with him, that once pristine white floor now covered ( _absolutely covered_ ) in mud and refuse. 

Jarrod frowns, but says nothing. 

The young man scrubs a hand through his hair, and Jarrod realizes with a start that his hair is not brown, but rather a bright shade of platinum blonde. It's the mud that's darkening his hair, caked in some places and still wet in others. The blood on his cheek glistens in the lights of the room as he hauls a brown burlap sack onto the council's table. 

"What's this all about?" Demands Jarrod's colleague, nostrils flaring. 

The young man tilts his head, a sly smile creeping across his features. His teeth are piercing white in contrast with the blood and muck smeared across his face, and his lower canines, slightly pointed, look almost wolfish in nature. "I've got your trophy," He says, using his dagger to slice open the bag. 

Out of the bag and onto the table spills an entire host of what looks like claws and teeth. All obsidian black, chipped in some places, clearly freshly cut off of whatever animal this young man had battled. "From Old Tom," he says, and a low murmur echoes through the room. They've all heard of the fire skag--the creature of the Aventine caves, the terror that had plagued Drogo Pass for so long. 

Jarrod swallows thickly. "What is your name?" He asks, dumbfounded. 

The young man sketches a bow, droplets of blood and mud splattering the ground around him. 

"Erik Boone," he says. And then, a careful smile.

"Future bounty hunter."


	2. superpower

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [ dancing roach noises ] 
> 
> warning for violence

There’s dust in the air. 

Not unusual for Pandora, but irritating nonetheless - Erik rubs at his nose, sniffs, and fights off a sneeze. Bounty hunting is great, but it can be… tedious. He’s been squatting above this bandit camp for several hours now, doing everything he can think of to keep from dozing off. He’s not much when it comes to stakeouts, but he’d venture a guess that he’s not among the minority of people who get bored after hours of being idle. 

It’s just this  _ dust _ . It’s in his nose, his eyes, and if he’s willing to be particularly disgusting, he’d venture a guess that it’s caked into the shell of his ear. If he opens his mouth, it flies into his throat. Not very exciting stuff, he’d wager.

It stinks. Like body odor, like blood, like piss. It’s just the general smell of Pandora. He hasn’t yet found a place on Pandora that  _ doesn’t _ make Erik want to puke his brains out when he breathes through his nose. But then again - if he breathes through his  _ mouth _ , he gets that god… damn… sand.  _ Everywhere _ . 

Stakeouts aren’t particularly exciting in general. Erik wouldn’t consider himself impatient, necessarily, but come  _ on _ \- after four hours in the same spot, watching the same camp, with the same bandits patrolling between weapon crates and making idle chatter across oil drum fires, one might find themselves in a tight spot of boredom. 

All Erik wants to do - oh, with his whole  _ being _ \- is clear out the camp and loot everyone down there for all that they’re worth. But, unfortunately, none of those bandits are who he’s here for - and he’s found after a few years of this job that for the most part, the bandits won’t fuck with him if he doesn’t fuck with them. 

It’s a shame, really, that he  _ loves _ fucking with them.

Pandorans don’t have much of a grasp of Artemis. Which is fine, in all seriousness - it’s a few galaxies away, distant neighbors at best. Erik wouldn’t  _ expect _ Pandora to know anything about Artemis. The only other notable Artemisian who’d ever set foot on Pandora was the vault hunter Mordecai - and the bandits didn’t like  _ him _ that much, clearly. 

Anyone in the Dardanus system would know Artemis as the sovereign body - the center of activity for the Guild of Hunters, the shepherd of Selene and Hecate. But in Pandora, in the borderlands - Artemis is a distant memory. Something of a threat, but too far away to be seriously concerning. 

Which works in Erik’s favor, nine times out of ten. 

Because if these people haven’t heard of Artemis, then they  _ definitely _ haven’t heard of the ghostwalkers. Not that there are a lot of them to begin with. 

Which makes it  _ that _ much funnier when Erik walks through a wall and emerges on the other side, unscathed and completely normal looking. 

Their faces. Oh, their  _ faces _ . Mouths dropped open in surprise, hands limp on their guns as they momentarily forget to shoot at him. That’s the sweet spot - where Erik can close the distance and wrench his knife into their gut and laugh about it. 

Maybe he’s a bad person for enjoying it. 

But Mordecai had done it, right? And Mordecai… well. Mordecai’s nothing short of a hero.

But today’s not for the bandits. Erik’s waiting for something else - something quite a bit more exciting than a couple of bandits and the odd handful of skags. Music pulses through the earbuds pressed into his ears and he scrubs some dust from his face, wondering offhandedly if it’s possible to shit sand. I mean, if you ingest enough, right? He feels like it’s easily possible, considering how much dust and dirt has flown into his mouth in the past four hours. 

He doesn’t want to think about it. 

There are few times when Erik would find himself wishing to be back on Artemis, but in this moment - yeah. He’d trade all this dust and decay and rot for rolling fields of grass and dewy mountains any day. 

He stands, stretches his legs, walks the ledge he’s been perched on like an agitated panther. He’s beginning to wonder if he’s in the right place - but this is where he’d been told to meet his bounty, and the guild has never steered him wrong before. He taps his fingers along to his music, bobs his head, lip-syncs with all the fervor of an experienced performing artist. 

He’s gotta make it fun, or he’ll go insane before he’s thirty. 

Erik does this for about twenty minutes before he sees a flash of red from the corner of his eye. 

Normally he’d just dismiss it as a bandit. Red usually means blood, or a marauder, or some crimson raider who’s quite lost. 

But this slash of red in the corner of his vision seems to be making intelligent conversation - or, at least, whatever counts as intelligence on this dust pit of a planet. 

He looks up, tilting his head just so. Two blotches nearing the edge of the camp - nearing the bandits still milling about like flies over a carcass. He doesn’t think they can see him, but he can see them just fine. A man and a woman, by the looks of it - one quite thin and tall, the other short and wound with muscle. 

He’d venture a guess that the tall one isn’t from around here. Erik can see it in the way he walks - chin up, back straight, as if he’d been raised an aristocrat. The other one seems just a shade more comfortable in this… environment. As comfortable, at least, as you can get on Pandora. She’s walking with a little more of a swagger in her step - easy, smooth, with just a  _ hint _ of heavy stepping. 

Erik plants his hands on his hips, almost curious to see how these two conduct themselves against a camp full of bandits. It doesn’t take long before they’re spotted - a bandit near an oil drum grunts and hoists a shotgun, aiming it at the duo without much thought. 

“State ‘yer business,” shouts the bandit, having to raise his voice to be heard over the sudden clamor of the camp coming alive with activity.

The tall one lifts his hand in a wave, and he looks like he’s about to say something when the shorter one elbows him in the side and takes a step forward. 

“We’re looking for a bounty hunter,” she replies, obviously ignoring the indignant protests of her partner. 

“No bounty hunters here.” The bandit pumps the barrel of the shotgun. “You here to take our stuff?”

The woman shakes her head. “Just looking for a bounty hunter, man. No need to get your panties in a twist.” 

Another bandit lets out a howl. “They’re gonna rob us!” He shouts, voice high and shrill and clamoring. 

It’s amazing, really, how quickly these bandits are capable of whipping themselves into a frenzy. The camp explodes with activity and it’s not long before bullets start flying. Erik wants to sigh. He’d  _ hoped _ to get out of here without a trace. Too bad. 

He takes his eyes off the duo for a moment to assess the situation. Twenty guys, maybe. A big guy, a couple tinks, a handful of psychos in their bloodstained hockey masks. Erik rolls his neck, cracks his knuckles, cranks the music up in his headphones. Easy stuff. He kisses his knuckles, utters a short prayer.

And then - 

He disappears. 

A deafening  _ pop _ as he snaps out of existence, another  _ crack _ when he reappears in the middle of the camp. His veins glow silver and his eyes burn as the world swims around him, the aftereffects of ghostwalking. He turns, regaining himself quickly. Over thirty feet of distance covered in less than five seconds. Not bad, if he does say so himself. 

A few of the bandits recognize him. 

“It’s the Shadow!” One of them screams, and Erik can’t help but laugh as he winds up and pitches his dagger at the nearest bandit. It sinks into his forehead with a wet  _ thunk _ and the bandit falls in a spray of bullets, the hail taking out several of his buddies along the way. 

A pop. Erik is gone again. 

A sound like a whipcrack - and he’s back, standing next to the man and the woman, extending his hand to them. His eyes shiver with electricity, his skin practically crackling with lightning as his atoms knit back together. “Nice to meet you,” he tells them with a grin, disguising the pain that lances up his spine. “Don’t shoot me.”

And then he’s off again - tilting into a sprint, sweeping up his dagger as he passes and throwing it once more in an easy, practiced motion. This time it finds itself turning end over end and then burying itself hilt-deep in the chest of a psycho. Not bad, Erik thinks. But he can do better. 

Another snap, and Erik fades from view once more. One stride, two strides, three - each step pushing him through the frantic bodies of the bandits, stunning them where they stand as he passes like liquid through their physical space. When he reappears behind them, he turns and produces a second knife from his sleeve - cutting their throats, one, two, three, in easy succession. 

A projectile screams past his head, and he thinks for a moment that the air succeeding the bullet feels  _ hot _ . He looks up to see the woman poised with a small, palm-sized gun, aiming at a bandit just behind him. The bandit is on fire. An incendiary round, clearly. The bandit is downed in one shot, screaming as he goes. Erik nods, impressed. Small gun, but very powerful. He has a peculiar feeling that the woman behind the gun is much of the same. Cut from the same cloth, as the phrase stands. 

Erik can’t stop to admire her, however. 

He returns to his knife and tugs it out of the chest of the downed psycho, cleaning the blade of blood in a practiced flick of his wrist. He’s been doing this for a  _ long _ time. He’s been a warrior for far longer than he  _ hasn’t _ . And it’s evident in the way he moves - smooth, liquid, like a dancer. 

Slick as butter in a pan, he takes down three more bandits. The pop of gunfire begins to quiet, and Erik can hear the hum of electricity as the taller half of the stranger duo snaps out the antenna of a stun baton. It takes a mere tap of the baton to the body of a tink to send the bandit rocketing into the air, defying all of the laws of physics that ought to apply in this situation. 

But, Erik thinks as he fractures out of sight, he’s never been one to obey physics. 

He reappears behind the final bandit, who seems to have gotten a little generous with the trigger on his machine gun. Erik plunges his knife into the sweet spot between the bandit’s shoulderblades and the bandit drops like a rock, a howl dying in his throat as his heart stops beating. 

Erik lifts a hand and wipes the sweat from his forehead, fingers coming away slick with blood and perspiration. 

He lowers his head, eyes and ears fuzzy, as though his skull had been emptied of all organic matter and subsequently filled with cotton. He shakes his head, forcing himself to see straight as the electricity in his veins recedes like a cat returning to its nap. His hands clench, unclench, and clench again. Another moment, and he doesn’t feel like he’s about to keel over where he stands, so he looks up with a grimace to find the tall man scrambling back to the shorter woman, babbling something about safety and bounty hunters and  _ blood _ . 

Yeah, Erik thinks as he sheathes his dagger and plucks his headphones out of his ears, the music still plenty loud enough to be heard as it pumps through those poor, poor speakers dangling around his neck. 

“Heard you were looking for a bounty hunter,” he muses as he approaches the duo, making a show of looking  _ nonchalant _ about it. What sort of message would it send, if they knew that ghostwalking made him want to vomit just as much as it made him want to challenge a Saint to a fistfight? 

The woman nods, and her expression looks firm as she regards him with what looks like contempt. “Erik Boone,” she confirms, brow rising expectantly. 

Erik grins. “Technically, my full title is Sergeant Erik Boone, First Ghostwalker of the One Hundred and Fifth Infantry, Bounty Hunter of the Artemisian Guild of Hunters.” The taller man looks startled, and Erik’s smile widens. “But you can call me Erik.”

The taller man nods, then extends a tentative hand. A robotic hand, Erik notes idly as he grips it and shakes in greeting. “Rhys,” the man says. He gestures at the woman. “And this is-”

“Fiona,” she finishes. She doesn’t move to shake Erik’s hand, but he can’t quite blame her. Everything about her  _ screams _ Pandora. If his hunch is at all correct, she likely doesn’t trust him about as far as she can throw him. 

“Nice to make your acquaintance,” Erik finally says, rolling his shoulders back. “I’ll be honest with you guys, I don’t know why I was assigned to find you.” He shifts, tapping his fingers against his thigh. “So would either of you be willing to fill me in?”

The two cast a glance at one another, and then Rhys speaks. “We need a ride.” 

Erik must have a dumbfounded look on his face, because Rhys continues. “To Hecate.” 

Erik scrubs a hand through his hair. “Two things,” he begins. “One, I don’t have a ship. And two,” He takes a step back eyes moving to Rhys. “Hecate is a  _ long _ fuckin’ way away. That’s a two week trip. At  _ least _ , if we’re not stopped by Orcus.”

Rhys nods. “We know. We’ve got a ship, but we need your clearance to get through the border patrol.” He pauses, chews the inside of his cheek. He glances at Fiona, and then back at Erik. “We’re vault hunters. Ezra sent us.”

The color drains from Erik’s face.  _ Ezra _ ? Know these two?

Erik’s mouth hardens into a grim line. “Then Ezra should’ve told you that my clearance extends to nobody but myself.” He picks at the white hand insignia on his coat. “The white hand works for the wearer and the wearer alone. Not passengers.”

Fiona shakes her head. “That’s why you’ve gotta disguise us as guild members.” 

Erik’s mouth opens in disbelief. “I can’t do that. That’s disrespectful to everyone who bled and died for a spot in the guild.” 

Fiona’s brow rises again, and Erik gets the feeling that she’s not the type of person to worry about what’s respectful and what isn’t. “Ezra would beg to differ,” she says, and it hits Erik like a boot to the gut. “He said you’d understand the need for revolution more than anyone. For the need to break the rules every once in a while.”

She shifts, and her eyes meet his. A challenge, he thinks. “This is about Orcus,” she continues. “There’s something on Hecate that can help take them down. We can’t get there without your help.”

Erik covers his face with his hands, drags his palms down his cheeks with all the contempt of a child throwing a tantrum. “Oh, don’t bring  _ Orcus _ into this. Saints,” he mutters. A groan. And then, “Oh, Ezra, that bastard.” Ezra  _ knew _ Erik wouldn’t be able to say no.

Erik drops his hands, heat rushing to his cheeks. He takes a breath. One more. Two more.

And then - 

“Where’s that ship?”


	3. kiss with a fist

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> for jick

Erik’s done some interesting stuff in the name of the guild, but chaperoning a road trip to Hecate seems to be -- well. To say the least, it’s quite the one-eighty turnaround from killing bandits and pocketing the reward and calling it a day. 

It’s not such a bad thing, really -- Erik’s grateful for the change in routine and he’s not too upset about the opportunity to make new friends, considering that most people he meets are too afraid of him to speak to him properly. 

Being a bounty hunter is a lot lonelier than it sounds, he thinks. But it’s a hell of a lot more fun than rotting in the Nonan eridium mines, that’s for sure. If he’d ever had any doubts about missing his family, the only time it’d ever truly come up was meeting Ezra again for the first time. They’re both adults now. A long time ago, the notion that he’d never see his family again had itched at his brain like a bug bite he couldn’t quite reach. As he’d gotten older, though, all of that had been tamped down by years of --

He doesn’t know. Conditioning, maybe. Knowing that he’s one of thousands of Artemisians who’ve said goodbye to the formalities and the niceties of family life had gotten to him in ways he’s not sure he likes. In the end of it all, his family had been an afterthought. Pushed to the back of his mind for the sake of graduating, and then forgotten as his days of bounty hunting began. 

Perhaps he hadn’t known how much he missed his mom, his dad, his sister, his cousins. Perhaps it’d just… slipped his mind. 

Because when he sees Ezra, standing at the base of the ramp onto Rhys and Fiona’s ship, his heart practically stops in his chest. His brain flashes sirens at him -- so many years of being told that family is weakness sends him into something close to a panic as he glimpses the curve of Ezra’s cheek, the white-blonde of his hair curling above his forehead. He can feel Rhys’s eyes on him, can feel the heat of Fiona’s gaze on the back of his neck. But all he can see is Ezra , standing there, with all the weight of the galaxy on his shoulders. Just the same as Erik remembers.

His legs take him one stride, two, three, and then he can’t wait anymore -- a whipcrack and he’s gone, another pop and he’s standing in front of Ezra, trying to control his breath, eyes wide with… something like love, perhaps. Awe. 

His little Ezra. 

Erik’s hands clench and unclench, frenetic energy roiling through him like lightning. Another breath, and then he tenses as arms wind around his midsection, pulling him into a long overdue hug. Erik, without thinking, returns the sentiment -- head dipping down, squeezing his cousin with everything he has. His eyes burn, like he wants to cry -- but no tears fall. Maybe he’s forgotten how.

Or maybe he’d just spent all his tears on his family, so long ago. 

Ezra’s arms are tight around Erik, and Erik responds in kind -- squeezing, squeezing, as if Ezra is a lilyfruit that Erik is trying to juice for all it’s worth. 

This feels good. This feels right. His heart is fluttering in his chest, rising to a fever pitch as the voices of his former teachers and instructors fill his ears with their mantras of family is weakness, family is pain, family is weakness.

Another moment, and Ezra is the first to pull away, a fierce grin painting his face. “Hey, Erik.” He says, and something ancient unravels itself in the deepest pits of the bounty hunter’s gut. 

Erik’s embarrassed to hear the crack in his voice when he utters a quick, “Hola, osito .” And then, a beat --

Erik holds up his left hand. His bad hand, the hand that doesn’t have quite as much gripping power as his right hand. The hand that hasn’t been the same since he was just a kid on Nona, crawling on his elbows and knees through a mineshaft with soot clogging his lungs and ash staining his skin gray. His palm trembles with the effort, but after a moment of concentration it begins to still.

His fingers bend. And he signs, with all the ease in the world, “ I love you.”

  
  


* * *

  
  
  


“So.” 

Erik lifts a brow. “Yes?”

“You’re a hoagie, then?”

“Yep.”

“And you graduated?”

He grins. “Yes.”

The siren leans back on the couch across from Erik, forefingers on her lips as she considers him. A thoughtful hum escapes her and Erik holds her gaze, his expression quizzical. 

“And you?” He finally asks.

“Oh, god,” Rhys mutters from the corner, cupping his eyes between his palm. “Don’t get her st-”

“The name is Aviana Birdsong, my darling bounty hunter. Former Eidolon and Commander to the Fourth Orcus Federation Starfleet, Sector Six-Bravo. Call me Birdie, if that’s the sort of thing that butters your biscuit. Other valid names include but are not limited to: Your Pristine Majesty, Queen Aviana, Your Most Ethereal Sireness, Most Powerful Siren in The Galaxy, or The Best thing to Come Out of The Orcus Federation Since They Dragged Their Sorry Arses to the Top.” Her grin is triumphant. Judging by the look on the faces of everyone in the room, introducing herself this way is quite… common. Fiona is shaking her head, Flick is otherwise distracted by the cat in their lap. 

Erik claps his hands together, thoroughly amused. “Consider my biscuit buttered.” It’s not like he hasn’t introduced himself similarly before. It makes for good conversation, anyway. 

“Gross,” Ezra calls from the kitchenette of the main deck, his unimpressed tone betrayed by the quirk of a smile turning up the corners of his lips. He leans back in his chair, propping his feet up with a blueprint spread across his lap. Isabel’s brow lifts, and the expression on her face looks something along the lines of amused. She and Ezra have been discussing plans all morning, but she leans away from the table, crossing her arms over her chest.

Erik tilts his head quizzically. “Eidolon, huh? Orcus?” He can’t ignore the way his lip curls at the notion of allying with an Orcus officer, but he can’t say that he can rightfully look at the way Ezra seems to trust her and not understand that some things just need to be overlooked. It had been Orcus that very nearly killed his father, his mother,  _ him _ . It was Orcus who had watched, unflinching as a mineshaft collapsed and came close to taking Erik’s left arm off. 

But Ezra trusts her, and that’s enough justification for Erik. Ezra had been on Nona too -- and if Ezra can overlook the Orcus uniform and the former affiliation, then Erik supposes that  _ he _ can as well. 

Birdie crosses one leg over the other and stretches her arms across the back of the couch, looking debonair and suave by all accounts. She tilts her head. “Right-o. Quite prestigious. Highly trained, very exclusive.” Her eyes flash with a certain sort of pride. She points at the upper right portion of her chest, eyes moving to the fold of Erik’s shirt, where the White Hand is emblazoned in typical Guild fashion. 

Is that a challenge Erik sees? Birdie’s brow raises, her mouth quirking into a smile. 

Saints know he can’t turn down a challenge. “Not as exclusive as the guild, though.” He’ll take the bait. Erik’s normally quite bad about turning everything into a competition. Call it habit, call it an undying need to prove himself. “Training’s harder, too.” He adds, mouth twisting into something of a grin. 

Birdie sniffs, rubbing her nose with her forefinger. “I’d kick your sorry arse in a fight any day, hoagie.”

Flick snorts. “I’d like to see that,” they mutter, threading their fingers through Lucky’s fur. And then they look up, eyes wide. “No, wait, I’d actually like to see that.”

Erik shrugs, brows rising as he looks toward the siren. She looks back at him. 

Her voice is almost excited when she speaks. “We’ve got quite the trip ahead of us, haven’t we? Why not spice things up a bit?” She rises from her spot on the couch, dusting off the thighs of her pants. 

Flick claps their hands, startling the cat, and Fiona, who’d been dozing off. “You guys should totally beat each other up.” They lift their arm, flexing their bicep. “Test of strength. Prove who had better training.”

Erik had the better training, obviously. Not that he’d say that out loud without first proving himself, but still -- he’s pretty convinced that the academy had whipped him into perfect form far better than Orcus had ever trained their Eidolons. One bounty hunter for every two Eidolons, Erik’s instructor had once told his hand-to-hand class. Maybe it’s personal bias speaking, maybe it’s the teachings of his school. But it’d be interesting to test that theory, he thinks, chewing the inside of his cheek. 

Nobody’s really done much since Erik’s boarded, so he’s not quite in the mood to complain about the proposition of a spar. At least it’s something to do. Something to break the silence. 

But Birdie takes the offer before he has the chance to get a word in edgewise. “Deal.” 

“I’ve got no problems with that,” Erik agrees, getting to his feet. He stretches his arms behind his head, fighting off a yawn. “Long as you don’t mind getting knocked on your ass.”

The siren reaches across her scrimshamble coffee table and Erik grips her knuckles as he shakes in agreement. A moment, and then he squeezes a little harder, just enough to be menacing. The smile on his face is pleasant. Welcoming, even. Birdie squeezes back, and Erik’s knuckles groan with the pressure. The smile never leaves his lips.

Birdie steps away, turning to card her fingers through her hair and gather it all into a ponytail. 

Flick hoots with excitement and rockets from their spot on the couch, already scrambling towards the stairs to the cargo hold. After a moment, a rattling whine and periodic thumps echo up the staircase, followed by the low groan of something being dragged across the floor. Birdie pauses in tying her dreads back to shout down to the lower level. “You’d best not be scratching my finish, mate!” 

Erik snorts, gesturing at the clutter around the room. He’d noticed it within moments of stepping on board, and it’d sent his skin crawling -- Erik is nothing if not neat, and living in an untidy workspace had long ago been conditioned out of him by the militaristic academy. “As if that matters to you.” It’s a simple goad, but enough that Birdie turns to face him with a new fire in those dark eyes of hers. 

“My ship,” she says. “My rules.”

More groans and screeches echo up the staircase and Birdie’s attention is once more pulled away from Erik. “Bloody hell--” She grunts, and soon she disappears into the cargo hold, booted feet thumping down each step with dull thuds. 

After a moment, Erik catches Ezra’s eye. Ezra shrugs, winks, then bends over the table, returning to his conversation with Isabel. 

Erik bends down and unties his boots, slipping them and his socks from his feet. Then he turns to follow Birdie and Flick into the cargo hold, where he finds the two of them making quick work of shoving everything to the back of the ship. 

“Right then,” Birdie says, addressing Flick. “Can’t put too much at the back, or it’ll throw this beauty off balance.” She dusts her hands together, nodding. After a moment she crouches down and gives a stack of crates a mighty shove, pushing them all the way back against the wall. They hit the siding with a  _ thunk _ and then Birdie’s off to help Flick move a crate full of weapons, the palms of her hands flooding with pink as her blood works to keep up with her efforts.

Erik bends down and pushes a mystery crate up against the wall, careful to ensure that he’s not disturbing the crates behind it. He has to jimmy it a bit to get it out of the way, but it budges eventually, and Erik stands, flexing his fingers for a minute before moving to the next crate. They work in silence, save for Flick’s quiet humming to themselves as they kick a few boxes into the wall.

Erik almost wants to laugh. The last time he’d sparred with someone he’d been about to graduate. He’d ended up on his back, the breath knocked out of his lungs, a boot on his throat. 

It hadn’t been his fault that he’d been paired with the top of the class, but then again -- she’d been the top student for a reason. His cheeks heat at the memory, and something close to nostalgia washes over him and he straightens up after pushing the last crate on his side of the cargo hold. They’ve cleared up floorspace. It’s enough to do what they need to do, by the looks of it. The ceiling is high enough that Erik isn’t having to stoop to stand up straight, and it seems as though the lower deck is just a bite longer than the upper deck. He plants his hands on his hips, nodding his approval. 

Erik’s shoulders tense as the sound of footsteps echoes down the stairwell. Isabel emerges into the cargo hold, followed by Ezra and the vault hunters, who both look like they’re about to fall asleep where they stand. “Hey-o,” The bounty hunter says with a grin. “Looks like we’ve got an audience, Pigeon.” He turns to look at Birdie, but all she’s doing is stretching, rocking back and forth on the balls of her feet. 

“You better make this good,” Fiona says, her voice scratchy as she seats herself on top of a crate. Rhys stands next to her, arms crossed over his chest. He nods his agreement. 

“Trust me,” Flick reassures from their spot nearby.. “It’ll be good.” They leap to the ground from a perch atop a weapons cache, landing lightly on their feet, then pad over to Ezra and Isabel, who welcome them with open arms. Flick nestles between them, looking quite cozy. Erik’s eyes find Ezra, who’s in the midst of planting a kiss on top of Flick’s head. Erik’s mouth quirks into a smile. 

Erik’s a newcomer to this strange little group of friends, but it’s clear that Ezra is happy. He finds his cousin’s eyes, brows lifted in question. Ezra gives a little nod of approval, and Erik’s shoulders relax. He turns to face Birdie, reaching behind his head and tugging his shirt off by the neck. After balling up the fabric and tossing it to the side, he approaches the center of the floor. 

“I’ll kick your arse, hoagie.” Birdie says as she takes her place across from him. Her dark Orcus armor glows obsidian under the lights of the cargo bay. Erik doesn’t need armor to be a good fighter, he thinks as he plants his feet. All he needs are his feet under him and his arms at his sides. 

He can’t fight the smile that comes to his lips. “I’m sure you will.”

Flick worms their way from between Ezra and Isabel and approaches the middle of the floor, coming to stand between Erik and Birdie. They clasp their hands together and tilt their head down, just slightly. “Ladies and gentlemen and other assorted meatheads,” they announce to the room, angling their gaze up at Erik. He offers them an encouraging smile. “We are gathered here today to bear witness to the age-old battle of the federations. Orcus versus the Guild of Hunters, The Triangle versus the White Hand, the Eidolon versus the bounty hunter. Et cetera, et cetera.” Flick sweeps into a low bow. Rhys claps, nodding solemnly. 

“I love watching corporations fight. It’s like, my favorite thing to do. Ever.” Rhys assures, and Flick just points their forefinger at him in silent validation. 

“My name is Flick, and I’ll be the ref in today’s fight.”

_ Like the ant? _ Erik wonders.

They lean onto their tiptoes and stare pointedly at each of the contenders. “Keep it clean, folks. I’ll be watching.” 

Erik gives them a thumbs up.

They step back, nodding. “On your marks,” they say, and Erik’s shoulders tense just slightly. He can see the way Birdie seems to grow a few inches, her heels coming off the floor. “Get set,” Flick continues, taking another step back. “Aaaaaand --” They look at an imaginary watch, then frown. They pat at their pockets, pull out an imaginary pocketwatch, and flip open the imaginary lid to examine the imaginary clockface. 

They wait for a moment, mouth wrinkling. Another beat, and then--

“Go!”

And then as if someone’s just fired a starting gun, the two of them burst into motion at the very same time. Erik pops out of existence, the sound of his Ghostwalk nearly deafening in the close quarters of the cargo bay. He’s always liked that—the whipcrack that signals his disappearance and reappearance. He doesn’t think it’s normal for Ghostwalkers to do that, but then again—he’s never met another one. He couldn’t tell you anyway.

In the same moment, Birdie disappears, melting into thin air. Erik, despite being… well, in pieces, suddenly feels like he’s walking through syrup. Another moment, and then he freezes -- not completely paralyzed, but moving so slowly that it certainly feels that way. He tries to move his fingers, to turn his head, but it’s as though he’s been encased in honey. A sickly sweet feeling. A powerless feeling.

It feels like there’s a giant hand stretched out in front of him, a wall that for once he can’t pass through. This is… unpleasant. He wonders if Birdie’s doing this. If she is, then he’s surprised -- it’s almost nice to meet someone whose ability matches his own. It’s humbling, really. He’d gotten cocky in his years on Pandora. Maybe he’d gone soft, fighting the same bandits with the same guns over and over again. Maybe he’d lost his touch.

But maybe not. 

All at once, he feels as though there’s a hand around his throat, tightening, squeezing his airway until he can’t catch his breath. He wants to move his hands to get whatever it is away from his throat but he’s just… stuck.

And then the hand is gone, the grip on his neck fizzling away. Erik doesn’t know how he knows he’s free, but he  _ is  _ — so the instant he feels that release from that syrupy stillness another crack echoes through the cargo hold and he reappears next to Flick, gasping, his chest slicked with sweat. “What the hell?” He wonders, and Birdie reappears from nothing with an equally as confused expression on her face. 

“You’re a slippery little bastard, Boone. What’s that business you just did, disappearing like that?” Even she looks winded, like it’d taken all her energy to hold him in one place. Sweat rolls down her temple, and she’s breathing hard, like she’s just run a few sprints.

Erik plants his hands on his knees, bending over to clear his head of the fog that had collected behind his eyes. He holds up a forefinger.  _ One second _ .

His head throbs. Saints, it hasn’t felt this bad since the surgery that had granted him these abilities to begin with. He can’t hide his discomfort this time—his mouth twists into a grimace and his eyes squeeze shut. Either the floor is moving, or he’s swaying on his feet like a drunkard. He feels a hand on his back. “Hoagie,” murmurs a voice, and it sounds like Flick, but he can’t be too sure. Everything is swimming. It’s as if someone stuffed his ears with cotton and dunked him underwater. 

He counts to three. Then he counts to ten.

He opens his eyes, takes a breath through his nose, then straightens. His vision swims with stars, and then slowly begins to crawl back to him in slow, ragged bursts.

And then he frowns. “Pigeon,” he groans, almost pouting. “That’s not very fun. Let’s not do that again.” He tries to keep some humor in his voice, despite the ache stretching its way down his spine. The careful smile Birdie sends him is something of a coolant, enough to shake him out of whatever he’d just been stuck in. 

He clasps his fingers together and rolls his wrists like a boxer, blinking hard as the last of the fog clears from his head. Another breath. “To answer your question,” he starts, lifting a brow, “I’m a Ghostwalker. There aren’t many of us.” Erik’s never met another Ghostwalker, let alone  _ heard  _ of another famous Ghostwalker other than Saint Daniel himself. It would make sense that the Eidolon doesn’t know -- the guild had always been fairly secretive anyway.

If there’s one Order the denizens of the galaxy know about for certain, it’s the Order of the Weaponsmiths. Anyone who can summon a blade from the very skin of their wrists and the iron in their blood is a person to be looked out for -- for better or for worse.

Birdie plants her hands on her hips, chewing on the inside of her cheek. “Clearly. Why couldn’t I--” She waves a hand at him, tilting her head. “Hold you?”

Erik takes a few steps forward, using a forefinger to tap the plating of Birdie’s shoulder. “Yours is all technology,” he mutters. “Mine?” 

He shakes his head. Maybe it’d been Birdie’s… powers that had sent him into such a fit. “It’s all me.” He shrugs, then reaches up to tap the skin-colored plate on the back of his neck. 

Birdie flexes a hand and turns to face him. “I stopped you, but I didn’t stop…  _ you _ ?” She frowns. “That’s a load of bollocks.” 

Erik lifts his hands defensively. “Atoms don’t obey time, Pigeon. I didn’t write physics. Don’t ask me how it works, because I don’t know.”

Birdie shakes her head. “Right, then. Once more, except neither of us… disappear. Hand to hand. The old fashioned way, yeah?”

Erik steps around her and returns to his spot, lifting his hands to his face and planting his feet. Now they’re talking. This…  _ this  _ is what Erik remembers. 

Muscle memory, he thinks. He can’t count the amount of times he’s lain flat on his back, chest heaving as stars swim through his vision, some other student standing above him, red-cheeked and sweating. He can still hear the jeering of his classmates as they spar with one another, using kendo sticks and bo staffs and some of those cushioned paddles that look sort of like hotdogs. The very memory of it sends a rush of adrenaline twisting through his veins, and he nods at Birdie to let her know he’s ready. 

Oh, is he ready. 

Flick steps between them again. “Ladies, gentlemen, and assorted meatheads,” they say once more, this time addressing the people gathered near the front of the cargo bay. “We find ourselves at the precipice of combat. Where many people, nay,  _ few  _ people, have ever come back sane.” They fan their face with their palm. “Let us say goodbye to these brave warriors as they prepare once more to battle.”

Flick sketches a bow and Erik watches as Birdie secrets away a smile. 

“Goodbye,” Fiona says solemnly, and her voice is joined by a chorus of others as Ezra, Isabel, and Rhys chime in behind her. 

Birdie breaks her stance just briefly to cast her comrades a salute. And then she lowers herself into something of a crouch -- not all the way down, but hunched just enough to give herself some leverage for when she will inevitably spring forward with only her legs as accelerants. 

Flick lifts their arms. “On your marks, get set, aaaaand-” 

They pause, check their imaginary pocketwatch again, this time making even more of a show of polishing the watch and slipping it back into their pocket. 

“Go!”

Birdie comes for Erik, and he meets her in the middle. Two highly trained warriors -- athletes in every respect, skilled in more ways than one. Fighting, Marcel had once told Erik, is a lot like dancing. Sequential movements, performed with a partner, each person using the other as a springboard for ideas and freestyles. A fight can’t be a true fight without both dancers giving their all. Because if one dancer is stronger than the other -- if one performs better, if one outlasts the other, then it’s not truly a fight, is it?

When Birdie swings, Erik ducks, and when Erik swings, Birdie steps to the side, narrowly missing Erik’s swipe. Erik’s got the height advantage -- he’s at least a head taller, with a longer wingspan to boot. But Birdie is faster. Erik’s never had speed on his side -- even Ghostwalking, he’s slower than one might expect from someone with his abilities. 

Even without their powers involved, it’s a level match. The playing field is even, and Erik is  _ quite _ enjoying the game. 

There’s no doubt that Birdie’d been trained well. But if Erik’s being honest, he’s been… pulling his punches. She lands hits to his chest, back, arms. He deflects her blows with his forearms, hits her in return when he can. 

She flits around him almost like a hummingbird -- and Erik can keep up, but just barely. Another few minutes of this and he’ll be too tired to keep up, he thinks. Maybe that’s her play -- to just move until her opponent  _ can’t _ , all combat aside. But Erik’s been trained for this. He’s been trained for everything . Those people who put him on his back, all those years ago?

He’d put them on their backs, too. In the same way those gymnasium lights swam above his head, he’d always made sure anyone who’d knocked him down would receive the same treatment sooner or later. Everyone at the school was different in their fighting styles. Some fast, some slow. Some close, some far. Some used weapons, others used their fists. Some used their heads, some used their feet. Erik had fought them all. 

And he’d fought well.

Birdie slips by, and Erik sticks his foot out. That’s all it takes, really.

The Eidolon is falling in an instant, throwing her hands out in front of her to catch herself as she tumbles to the floor. Winded, she rolls onto her back, breathing hard. Erik stands above her, cheeks red with exertion and chest slicked with sweat. A moment of triumph, and then he extends a hand. 

She grips his palm, and he helps her up with a groan. Her brow furrows. 

And then Erik’s feet are no longer underneath him and his back hits the floor with a bang. The breath in his lungs is gone in an instant and he groans as his back begins to sting with the impact. “Fuck,” he mutters. 

Birdie’s laugh rings in his ears as she reaches down to help him up. 

“One for one,” she says. 

Erik squeezes her hand, letting her take his weight as she hauls him upwards, then plants his hands on his lower back and bends, letting out an exasperated laugh. “Shit,” he groans. “We’ll have that tiebreaker soon, Pidge.” 

He looks up at her to find her smiling at him, sweat dotting her brow. She lifts her hand, beckoning for a high five. Erik obliges, his own smile creeping across his face.

“Just not today.”

  
  



	4. phantom pains

There is a hush in the Drogo Pass Hall of Warriors, and Erik can feel it like he can feel his clothes against his skin. It's a strange sort of quiet. The quiet of a holy sanctuary, the quiet of a temple left to ruin. The first time he'd set foot in the Hall, he'd been no more than eleven years old and a squirt of a boy just beginning to grow into his dark brown trainee roughspun. 

There had been a sense of awe filling him that day, his eyes landing on the dozens of relics and weapons belonging to former Artemisian warriors. The shards of the shattered blade of the first Weaponsmith, a hunk of bone said to have come from the sandworm that had once terrorized the neighboring town of Lefevre. A rusty, hand-built sniper rifle--the first weapon of the Vault Hunter Mordecai, an Artemisian legend in his own right. All of these relics encased in bulletproof glass, backlit by green light, kept at room temperature by ventilation systems that hummed and purred under Erik's feet. 

The hall itself seems ancient--a vast, vaulting thing shaped in its structure to resemble an outstretched hand, painted stark white and lined with dark oaken timber hewn from the surrounding forests. Today, Erik is standing in the palm of this hand--in the very center of the hall, surrounded by dozens of his former classmates, all standing in rigid lines with patented middle-gaze stares and almost grim frowns. The lines of students are concentric--circles branching out, like the inside of a tree. In the middle of the smallest circle is a stage--not small at all, considering the formidable size of the Hall itself. 

And on this stage is Erik--the last in a line of twelve graduates, flanked on either side by the head instructor and Grand General of the Artemisian Guild. 

Erik's stomach is twisting with fire. This place is meant to be venerated--and though the quiet is normally quite comforting, Erik finds that he'd give just about anything to hear someone cough. To rustle around. To do something, God,  _ something _ other than stand about like blocks of cheese. This is graduation, he thinks. This is the truest test of resolve, and the only one he's ever been issued that he doesn't know that he can beat. He  _ wants  _ to beat this. More than anything.

But this is no ordinary graduation. This is the decision time, the time to put your future and your paycheck into the hands of the Guild. To trust the Guild completely, to understand that the Guild will protect your legacy as a bounty hunter and as a hero. This is Erik's chance to prove himself--and if that means standing here doing his best impression of a lemon, then that's what he'll do. 

To the best of his ability, at least.

The head of the academy is pacing the stage, reciting some timeless speech at the dozens of students circled around them. There are no parents here to see their children off--Erik had said goodbye to his parents years ago. There are no siblings, no relatives, no family friends to wave to. There is only the sea of black fatigues and gaunt faces. The white hand insignia of the guild is stamped on the breast of each set of fatigues, and again on the left thigh of the pant leg. The white hand--everywhere, as far as the eye can see. Reaching for Erik. Almost mocking. 

In front of the line of graduates is a long table with a green satin sheet thrown over the top. There are misshapen lumps under the sheet, and steam seems to emerge from beneath the table as if someone had placed a fog machine for dramatic effect. 

The head of the academy paces. Back, forth, back, forth, practically wearing a hole in the stage. And then she turns, sharply--the harsh angles of her face catching the green light emanating from the corners of the room, from the relics of heroes long passed. Her eyes are a deep shade of rose-colored pink. The eyes of an oculus. They glow almost yellow in the light of the hall. 

“The time has come to choose, graduates.” She turns to face them, clasping her hands neatly behind her back. “The gift of a Hero. A gift passed from generation to generation, a gift reserved for only the finest of our warriors.” With one swift movement of her hand she grips the green satin sheet and flings it from the table. As the sheet flutters unceremoniously to the ground, Erik’s eyes land on three identical iron bowls. Matte black, each one full of smoldering pieces of charcoal. 

Erik’s heart jumps in his chest, but if there’s one thing he’s learned from being in this academy, it’s to keep his expression clear of emotion. Of  _ fear _ . There’s no place in this school for things as trivial as fear. 

“You will step up to the table when I call your name.” Says the head of the academy, using a perfectly manicured hand to gesture at the three bowls. “There is a knife on the table for your convenience. Cut your palm, carefully, and bleed into your bowl of choice.” There is no noise from the crowd, but the tension that rolls through the room is palpable anyway. “The middle bowl is for the Weaponsmiths. May Saint Leon keep your weapons sharp and your blows powerful, so that you may bring honor to this guild.” 

The head of the academy moves her hand, pointing at the furthermost bowl on the right. “The bowl to your right is for the order of the Oculus. May Saint Alana clear your sight in battle and steady your aim, so your weapons will always strike true.” Her eyes seem to flash with pride. Her chin lifts just so. The dignity of an Oculus--proud of her faction, even in retirement. 

Her gaze moves to the final bowl, her mouth curling into something that looks like a sneer. “And the bowl to your left is for the Ghostwalkers.” Erik stares daggers at the bowl, the barest beginnings of a frown pulling his mouth down. “May Saint Daniel soften your footsteps and guide you through the darkness when all other lights go out.” 

Finally, the woman takes a step back. Her eyes find the first in the line of twelve, a slim girl with obsidian black hair that falls nearly to her waist. “Julianna Conroe.” Says the woman, gesturing to to the table. 

Julianna takes a step forward, features hard as diamonds. Erik knows her--quite intimately, in fact. She hadn’t seemed so grim when she’d been unbuckling his jeans a few weeks ago, but Erik can’t blame her for her disposition--this is a serious time, for serious faces only. Julianna reaches for the knife in the middle of the table. It’s quite large, and quite sharp. It glints like fire in the low light of the temple. She brings it to her palm, and Erik can see as she steels herself. Shoulders tensing, chin raising. With a flash she swipes the blade across the flat of her hand. Blood wells to the surface of the cut, pooling in crimson rivulets. Even from his spot in line, he can hear the hiss of air being sucked through her teeth. 

Carefully, she sets the knife down, wiping the edge of the blade on the tablecloth. She balls her bleeding hand into a fist just as her blood begins to drip. The crimson droplets fall like rain into the iron bowl, sizzling on the hot coals and evaporating in an instant. 

The head of the Academy turns to face the crowd of students. “Julianna Conroe,” She says, and her voice seems louder, somehow. “Weaponsmith.”

The audience erupts in applause, and Julianna sketches a low bow. She returns to her spot in line, bloody hand outstretched as a medic comes from behind her to wrap it, armed with gauze and hypodermic cooling spray. 

The rest of the students pass in a blur. One after the other. Weaponsmith, Oculus, Weaponsmith, Oculus. The tang of iron fills the room as blood is burned and burned and burned again. Erik’s brow furrows, the words and cheers of his classmates blending together like syrup. His feet are falling asleep and his hands are growing restless. He blinks hard. 

And then-

“Erik Boone.” 

He lifts his gaze, blinking again. The head of the academy is staring at him, rose-colored eyes burning with something that looks almost like distaste. His mouth sets into a grim line. Last in his class, he thinks. Twelve out of twelve. The ugly duckling. Most of the people in this room don’t think he belongs on this stage. He knows this, even though nobody would say it to his face. 

He steps forward, almost mechanically. The knife glints like fresh coin on the table in front of him. He reaches for it. It’s heavier than it looks, but it sits nicely in his grip. He’s always had a fondness for knives. The silence of the room is almost deafening--it swarms in his ears as potent as a hive of bees, blurring his eyes. 

The knife is cool as he presses it to his skin. And then--

A swipe. A sharp, stinging sensation, leeching across his skin--and then blood wells up around the edges of the knife, pooling quickly in his shaking hand. He sets down the knife and holds his hand out in front of him. He clenches his fingers into a fist--and when the blood from his palm drops onto the hot coals, a low murmur echoes through the crowd of students. 

The head of the academy pauses, then turns to face the crowd. Her voice is tight. “Erik Boone,” she says. “Ghostwalker.”


	5. new and sharp with many teeth

Fear is a subjective thing. In most cases, it can always be traced back -- to a moment or two when the mind was vulnerable and a life was put in danger or a individual wellbeing was threatened. When that _thing_ \-- reasonable or not, rational or not, gave the mind license to believe that its minutes were numbered. The brain develops memory -- wax impressions of threats long since passed, warning bells that go off whenever the brain has reason to believe that those circumstances may threaten its livelihood _again_.

It’s a natural thing -- to be afraid of skags, or spiders, or the stokeys that live in the mountains with their leathery wings and their glistening white fangs that drip with corrosive poison. Fear is what keeps footsteps light and senses on edge. It’s what keeps a person ready for _anything_ \-- what keeps them straining to listen to each creak and moan of a tree in the middle of a forest, each drip of water within the vast expanse of a cave system.

But fear -- as much as it’s a necessary evil in the interest of survival -- can also be a cripple. It generates a special sort of ice that freezes up bones and limbs and stems up breath in the lungs. In a moment where running is _imperative_ , fear locks the knees and tenses the shoulders.

It’s the Guild’s intention to _eliminate_ the latter of these responses to fear. 

And Erik isn’t sure if he’s ready.

Of course he’s _ready_ . There are three months until graduation, and he’s been told in privacy by Marcel that he’s in the running to be one of the final twelve. Which is _exciting_ , in all honesty. But Erik can’t afford to let his triumph and his arrogance ruin his shot at coming out on top. If there’s anything that this academy has taught him with ruthless clarity, it’s that _nothing_ is guaranteed. 

_Nothing_.

His knees bounce as he leans back in the hard plastic lobby chair, arms crossed tightly over his chest as he waits for his name to be called. There are twenty students in this room -- twenty of the prospective upper twelve, ready to be subjected to what may very well be the most difficult test the academy has ever thrown at them. This is only the first round -- this is only one session of many. But five people will be _cut_ , today. Five people will go back to their beds tonight knowing that they won’t graduate. Knowing that they won’t get to wear the white hand, won’t get to receive the gift of the guild.

Erik’s mouth pulls into a frown. 

“Erik,” comes a voice from beside him, and he lifts his head, looking over. 

“You’ll be fine,” Julianna says, placing a well-manicured hand on his knee. Her dark hair is pulled into a high ponytail, sapphire eyes glinting in the white light of the examination room. Her face is impassive as always, brows creased with something that might be concern. 

He looks away. “I know.” 

Her hand returns to her own lap, fingers slotting together primly. “We both will.” She finally adds, and Erik’s surprised to hear the uncertainty in her voice, as if she doesn’t quite believe what she’s saying. 

They’re both quiet, listening to the idle chatter of the students around them. Finally, a door at the end of the waiting room opens with a low groan, and a young woman with her hair in a tight knot on top of her head steps out, wearing scrubs and white medical shoes. “Julianna Conroe,” she says. “Please come with me.”

Erik blinks hard, then looks down at his lap. Julianna rises from her seat with a shaky breath, and Erik reaches up, catching her hand before she can leave. 

“Good luck,” he tells her, and the smile she flashes him is almost confused, like she hadn’t been expecting his well-wishes. She squeezes his fingers, then crosses the room to the nurse, and just like that--she’s gone.

Thirty minutes is how long Erik waits before he sees her again. This time, the door squeezes open and Julianna steps out, looking disheveled and somehow… different.

Julianna, ever unshakeable, looks… afraid. Flushed, eyes glassy, like it’s been quite a long time since she’s blinked. 

Erik wants to say something, but before he can get a word in edgewise, the nurse beckons at him with a perfectly manicured hand. “Erik Boone,” she says, and Erik gets out of his seat. He wants to say something to Julianna, but she passes him without a word, head ducked. 

He frowns, then shakes the tension from his hands and follows the nurse through the open door. The doorway emerges into a narrow hallway that looks like something out of a police precinct, with a mirrored window and a scrub station likely meant for sanitizing before a surgery. The nurse takes down information about his weight and his height and takes his blood pressure, as though she’s simply performing a routine check-up. 

After a moment, she opens a second door, gesturing for him to enter. He obliges, and when the door snicks shut behind him, he feels strangely discomforted by the fact that she hadn’t accompanied him inside. 

The room he walks into is large and… empty. Looking over, Erik’s eyes find the mirrored window he’d seen from the hallway, the only thing he can see his own reflection and the anxious slope of his shoulders. The only person within is an older man with salt and pepper hair and a neatly trimmed beard. “Welcome,” the man begins, gesturing at the single gray chair bolted to the floor in the middle of the room. “Please take a seat.”

It looks something like a dentist’s chair, with a headrest and arm support. But Erik doesn’t miss the leather straps at the wrists and the ankles, the belt buckle that will inevitably lash his head to the back of the seat. His neck tingles and he sits down carefully, letting out a long breath through his mouth. 

The man fidgets with some instruments on a metal medical tray beside him. “My name is Jake,” he begins, reaching for the strap under Erik’s left arm and looping it through the buckle on the opposite side. “One hundred and first infantry. Didn’t graduate, but landed a decent spot as a doctor.” He winks. “I’ll be with you for every step of the way today, so don’t worry about a thing. I’ll be here to ensure everything goes smoothly. I’ve been doing this for thirty years, so I trust you’ll understand that my experience is enough to assure you of your imminent safety.”

Erik bites his lip, then nods. Jake talks like an aristocrat, he thinks. Perhaps the doctor’s spent too much time in Orion. 

Jake pulls the strap tight, fastening Erik’s left wrist to the chair. He gives the leather an experimental tug, and finding it satisfactory, he steps around to the other side and begins work on Erik’s right hand. Erik flexes his left hand, almost disappointed when that telltale ache spreads up his arm and into his shoulder. 

But he bites the pain away and moves his attention to Jake. “How long will this take?” He asks. 

Jake shrugs, tightening the strap and effectively pinning Erik’s right arm to the chair. “Hard to say,” he admits as he crouches to fasten Erik’s feet down. “Some people are under for longer than others. It all depends on how you respond to the serum.” Jake stands, hands settling on his hips before he returns to the back of the chair and begins the final step of lashing Erik’s head down. “Everyone responds differently.”

The strap is cold and uncomfortable against Erik’s skin. It’s claustrophobic. He wiggles his feet, testing his movement. He’s not afforded much at all. Jake pulls the final strip of leather tight and Erik sucks in a breath. 

After several moments, the fastening is complete. Erik can only move his eyes as Jake walks around to the medical tray, scuffed white shoes quiet on the marble flooring. 

Jake clasps his hands in front of him. “It is my duty to explain this process to you to the best of my ability as a requirement of the Artemis Discretionary Law, Article 6B, Section 7. If you have any questions along the way, please feel free to stop me and ask. There is no time limit to our session today. If you feel as though this trial is something you’re not prepared for, you may leave. However, be warned that if you leave, you are removing yourself from the candidates being considered for graduation. Is that understood?”

Erik can’t nod, so he flashes Jake a thumbs up with his right hand. “Yep.”

Jake takes a breath, then begins. 

“It is in the best interest of the Artemisian Guild of Hunters to produce the highest quality bounty hunters to be commissioned out as mercenaries to anyone who should require their service. In this we understand that fear must be reigned and conquered to ensure the best performance of the bounty hunters and the process of conquering this fear begins in this very room, where you are sitting.”

Jake crosses to the opposite end of the room, lowering the lights until only the dim overhead lamp casts a faint yellow glow across Erik’s immediate area. The doctor snaps a pair of latex gloves over his fingers as he continues. 

“I will be injecting you with the Artemisian Guild of Hunters’ own patented Formido serum. It is designed in such a way that it will interact in tandem with the amygdala and the hypothalamus of your brain. The fear center and the sleep center, respectively.” Jake reaches onto his tray and lifts toward the light a small vial of glittery purple liquid that looks as though it has a suspiciously syrupy texture. He pops the cap open and a sickly sweet smell fills the room, turning Erik’s stomach as he watches, prone, from his spot on the chair.

The doctor reaches down and uncaps a fresh needle. With a deft, practiced motion of his hand he dips the needle into the vial, pulling the plunger of the needle and filling it with that strange viscous purple substance. Another moment, and then he gives the hypo a few flicks to remove the bubbles of air trapped within.

“The Formido serum works by reading electrical signals in the amygdala and projecting these signals into your unconscious dreamscape. In layman's terms, this serum orchestrates your nightmares. It discovers what you are most afraid of and it plays those things before you in the form of a dream.” Jake sets the needle down, then rips open a small package of alcohol wipes and tugs down the collar of Erik’s shirt. The wipe is cold against Erik’s throat, and goosebumps prickle to the surface of his skin. “It will feel real. It will _look_ real. In most cases, your mind can’t differentiate between the serum and reality. Your job, mister Boone, is to convince yourself that it _isn’t_ real. Once you do, the serum will wake you back up.”

Jake picks the needle up and holds it still, poised over Erik’s neck like a guillotine. 

“Have I explained things to your satisfaction?” 

Erik hums his approval. “Yes.”

Jake’s face softens. Sympathetic, almost. “Conquer your fear, Erik. I will be waiting for you here when you do.”

And then Erik feels the sudden pressure and prick of the needle passing through his skin. 

In seconds, his eyes feel heavy. The last thing he sees before his head goes limp beneath the strap is Jake’s face, backlit by nothing but the light above them and tinted with something that Erik can only register as concern.

* * *

  
  
  


He’s back in the mines.

He doesn’t remember how, or why. But he’s here. 

It’s dark. Saints, it’s dark. Erik lifts his hand to his face, wiggling his fingers. Nothing. He can’t even see his own palm, inches away from the tip of his nose. His heart stutters angrily in his chest. 

He can’t _see_ the mines. But he _knows_ . He knows that’s where he is, in the same way he knows his own name or the color of his eyes. It just… _feels_ that way. He doesn’t need his vision to be able to discern those low ceilings, the crunch of silt and gravel beneath his feet. It’s something about the smell. It’s musty, old, slightly damp -- but that’s not unusual for an underground system of excavations and tunnels. It’s the smell of eridium on the still, empty air that sends Erik’s hackles raising and his tongue turning to cotton in his mouth. 

Eridium has… a smell. It’s an odd sort of thing, both describable and indescribable. If Erik were to try to put it into words, he might propose it as the smell of the air right before lightning breaks the sky. But… heavier, somehow. Thicker. Almost syrupy. The sort of smell that’s not too bad at first exposure, but the longer it sits, the more it begins to permeate. 

Erik hadn’t been able to shake that smell for years after he’d left the mines--that heavy sort of weight, like walking through amber. It makes him want to gag. He can’t think of a smell he hates more -- and he’s been waist deep in the Hecatian gas swamps, noodling for murkfish. This -- _this_ is the smell that had plagued his childhood. The smell he’d desperately tried to scrub from his pillowcase each night before he fell into a restless, dreamless slumber. It was the smell that clung to his mother’s clothes when he’d hugged her goodbye and joined the line of students filing into the academy for the first time, all those years ago. 

To his horror, he feels hot tears spring to his eyes at the thought of his mother. But just as soon as they appear, he knuckles them away, taking a heavy breath in through his nose. _Family is weakness_ , he reminds himself. His cheeks feel too warm, his ears burn, his eyes are beginning to sting. He blinks hard. Another several moments, and then he looks down at his feet. He’s just been standing here, processing, like an _idiot_. He should be doing something, shouldn’t he? 

He should be _moving_ . He reaches up and scrubs at his eye with a fist, relishing for a moment the white spots that dance in his line of sight. Erik’s first instinct is to reach _up_. Just in case, he thinks. He’s well tall enough to tell that the ceiling is low enough for him to touch, but he just… wants to be sure. 

Using his right arm, he gropes around above his head, nose wrinkling with concentration. His arm isn’t fully extended before his knuckles hit the arching peak of the tunnel above him, and he gives it an experimental push, frowning. It doesn’t give.

Okay, he thinks. Okay. 

He’s here.

He’s _here_. 

He can feel his heart beginning to race, the hair on the back of his neck standing at attention as fear and anguish begins to crawl with spidery fingers up the length of his spine. His breaths are quick, labored, like he’s trying to breathe with his nose held shut. The rock under his fingertips is gritty and when he rubs his thumb and forefinger together he can feel the dust of the mines flaking off against his skin.

Erik lowers his hand and wipes his fingers against his thigh, clearing his throat to break the eerie silence of the tunnels. 

He can’t stay here, he thinks. He has to _leave_. He can’t get trapped here again… he doesn’t know what he’ll do if he does. Erik takes a tentative step forward. His hands extend to either side of him, testing the walls for turns. He doesn’t remember it being this dark, back when he’d worked the mines as a child. There had always been lanterns hung on the walls, headlamps lashed to sweaty foreheads, flashlights pointed through the dark by Orcus officers in their stark white uniforms. And the eridium, Erik remembers. 

There has always been the eridium. 

Erik walks until his hands thump against a dead end, and then he feels around until he finds the next turnoff. His steps are small, shuffling. Careful. The darkness is suffocating. It’s almost as if it’s...alive. Breathing. The shadows seem to pulse around him, warm and almost alive. It’d always been temperate in the mines, which Erik had always thought to be strange considering how far underground these tunnels wound and ventured. 

With the darkness and the shadow and the emptiness -- it should have been bone-chilling.

But it’s not.

The squash of tiny, working bodies had always notched the temperature up by several degrees. Little shoulders, pressed end to end, working in tandem, unweathered chests heaving with breathlessness. The stench of sweat had filled these mines. The stench of fear, anger, of hopelessness. Erik can smell it now. He can _feel_ it. 

His heart pounds, fluttering and angry as though it’s a bird trying to escape the cage made by the curve of his ribs. Absently, he lifts a hand and presses his palm to the plane of his chest, surprised to find that his shirt is damp with sweat. Everything about him feels sticky. Dirty. Like he needs to climb into the nearest shower and scrub at his skin until he’s raw and pink, wiped clean of all this grime and grit and decay. His breaths are quick, betraying the fear he’s working so hard to tamp down. 

Erik lets out a shaky breath through pursed lips. His nerves are shot--even without being able to see, he can tell that his hands are trembling against his own better judgement. The smell of this place is acrid, festering. Like a rotting corpse left in the sun for far too long. 

He thought he was _done_ with Nona. With the mines, with this limb-shaking, paralyzing fear that threatened to bring him to his knees. His brain is on overdrive as he continues shuffling along again, squeezing his eyes shut. It makes no difference in whether or not he can see, but he somehow feels safer for it -- if he can’t open his eyes, logically, he can’t see what’s in _front_ of him. 

He walks until the darkness of the back of his eyelids begins to glow a gentle shade of purple. His eyes snap open, stinging and bloodshot with tears that haven’t yet spilled. 

Once more, he lifts his hand to his face. He can see the vaguest outline of his fingers, long and nimble and calloused from years of abuse. He wiggles his hand, frowning. And then his gaze moves to the walls around him, striped with eridium and far narrower than he’d imagined them being when it had been too dark to see. His shadow stretches across the ground in front of him, lengthy and almost inhuman. Erik reaches up again. 

This time, the ceiling is lower--his arm isn’t more than a few inches above his head when his knuckles thump against the arch of rock above him, and the knowledge that the tunnel seems to be getting smaller makes Erik’s stomach churn with anguish. He turns around, quickly, only to let out a sharp yelp when he realizes that the path behind him is closed. Walled up, blocked off, as if there’d never been a passageway to begin with. There is only the hum and pulse of the eridium veins, casting a preternatural purple glow across everything. 

“You can’t turn back.” Comes a voice from the shadows, high and eldritch. 

Erik claps a hand over his mouth, stifling a cry of surprise. His shoulders tense and he turns again, facing the eridium tunnel that stretches for what seems like miles in front of him. There’s a figure in the curve of the tunnel, small and narrow and unnaturally still. Child sized. 

The child steps forward, into the light of the purple glow. 

Erik’s heart stops, and his breath catches in his chest. “Ezra?” 

“You can’t turn back,” Ezra says, but his mouth does not move to form the words and his face remains impassive. His features are gaunt, thin, underfed. Erik reaches out -- maybe he can save his cousin, help him get out of here. 

“Ezra,” Erik tries again, moving to place his hand on the child’s shoulder. But Ezra jerks away, brow wrinkling just slightly. The fabric of Ezra’s tunic is ripped in odd places, torn across the shoulder in an angry slash. His shoes are beaten, worn, held together by spare staples and safety pins. Ezra steps away, the hollows of his cheeks ghostly in the purple glow of the eridium. Those blue eyes of his hold no warmth -- they only flash like old coin as Ezra turns, face melting into something that looks like anger.

“Behind you,” Ezra growls, his voice strange and inhuman, and Erik’s neck begins to prickle with anxiety as he looks over his shoulder at what _should_ have been a flat wall of rock. 

It _should_ have been solid. But where there once had been a dead end, the rock is swirling like it’s become mist. It sputters, burps, small flares of what looks like living shadow escaping it. It’s making a strange sort of sound, hissing and groaning in a surround sound of quiet whispers. Erik takes a quick step away, sweat rolling in rivulets down his temple. 

Why is he here?

Why is he _here?_

He’d been so focused on getting _out_ that he’d never wondered why he’s back on Nona to begin with. Hadn’t he been at school? 

Thinking about it sends a dull ache spreading through the back of his head and he blinks away tears that once more spring to his eyes, hot and stinging and terrible. And Ezra, he thinks. Ezra isn’t a _kid_ anymore. He shouldn’t be a _kid_. 

Erik turns, for the moment taking his attention off the wall of shadow swirling and wheeling behind him. Ezra is on the move, scrambling further into the system of tunnels. Soon he’s far enough away that even the purple light of the eridium doesn’t lend itself to Erik’s view of his cousin, and Erik’s got half a mind to follow Ezra down the pathway when the wall behind him begins to _whine_. 

Erik’s head is on a swivel. He looks at the purple expanse of tunnel, then at the wall of mist behind him, back and forth, his shirt clinging to his body with sweat. Finally, the whining of the mist becomes too anguished to ignore, and he quickly begins to backpedal, brow furrowing with concern. Momentarily his thoughts are torn from Ezra’s retreating form and he turns to fully face the wall of writhing shadow. 

A hand, gloved in white, extends from the shadows like an omen of death. Followed by an arm, followed by a torso, each component being spit forth as though being manifested by the very shadows themselves. Erik’s chest heaves as he watches the Orcus officer step into the tunnel, the purple glint of eridium reflecting off white armor all too familiar to his aching eyes. 

The officer is tall, the top of their helmet just brushing the roof of the tunnel. Their armor is shapeless, the Orcus standard -- perhaps to lend itself to anonymity, to the uncertainty that comes with being unable to look someone in the eyes. All Erik can see in the officer’s helmet is his own scared reflection, warped and pale and trembling like a leaf. 

The officer extends their arm, a long, snakelike whip tumbling from the plating of their sleeve. With a flick of their wrist, the whip ignites, humming with visible arcs of electricity that make Erik’s hair stand on end. He takes a gasping breath, backpedaling even faster. 

The Orcus officer begins to advance. “Get back to work,” they say, and their voice is neither masculine nor feminine, seeming to echo around Erik’s ears. It’s inside Erik’s _head_. They flick their wrist and the whip snaps against the ground, the crack deafening in the closed tunnel. An arc of electricity bolts over Erik’s head, and it takes him no time at all to decide to turn and run, feet pounding against the tunnel floor. 

He spares only one glance behind him as he runs, and what he sees makes him want to scream. He _does_ scream. He’s surprised he can make such a noise--low, keening, like the wounded cry of a dying animal. It doesn’t sound _human_ , coming from his mouth. He can’t fight the tears that roll down his cheeks, can’t fight the way his heart is threatening to crawl out of his mouth and toss itself onto the floor under his feet. 

The officer is following him, shrouded in that hissing, moaning fog of shadows. Erik realizes with horror that the officer’s feet aren’t touching the ground. They’re hovering above the floor, held aloft by the darkness, being propelled forward by invisible hands and fingers of shadows. “Get back to work,” They say again, their voice magnified tenfold by the curve of the tunnels. 

Erik turns to face forward, panting and grunting with each slam of his booted feet against the floor. The sound of the whip cracks behind him and he lurches forward, sweat pouring down the space between his shoulders. “Ezra!” He sobs, almost relieved as the frail shape of his cousin begins to come into view at the end of the tunnel. 

Ezra’s running too. He doesn’t slow, doesn’t turn around, the rags of his shirt flapping like sails behind him. Abruptly, his silhouette drops to the ground, and he continues his advance, crawling like a baby on his hands and knees. 

Erik can’t catch up to Ezra. He’s trying, but he _can’t_. 

The Orcus officer is still following. Erik checks over his shoulder, just briefly, and lets out a strangled sob as he realizes he’s losing his lead. If the officer gets any closer, the next crack of the whip will connect. Erik’s arms pump at his sides and his feet are skidding and his lungs are burning with the sudden exertion. 

Tears stream down his face, tracking rivulets in his cheeks and down the column of his neck. His shirt is chafing against his skin, and everything on him burns, like someone’s dipped him into a hot-spring headfirst. 

He’s just about to give up when he realizes the tunnel is getting smaller. 

In moments he’s stooping into a crouch, and he realizes why Ezra had fallen like a stone just moments before. Erik’s on his hands and knees, scrambling like some sort of animal through a tunnel that’s becoming too narrow to bear, and he considers, for a moment, shutting his eyes and just letting the officer catch him. But he _can’t_. He can’t give up on Ezra, no matter how much he wants to. 

So he continues crawling, the floor of the cavern cutting into his palms and tearing the fabric of his pants at the knees. 

He’s so busy heaving with sobs and the feeble whimpers of someone in terror that he almost doesn’t register the fact that the hum of the officer’s whip is no longer dogging his heels. 

He doesn’t want to turn around to check. 

He just keeps crawling, until the tunnel closes around him and his shoulders catch between the walls, wedged in tight like a doorstop. 

Erik drops his head, shuddering with exhaustion.

He ought to turn around and find another way out. There can’t just be _one_ tunnel in this mine system. There can’t just be _one_. 

It doesn’t make any sense that there’s only one. It doesn’t make sense that Ezra is still six years old, it doesn’t make sense that Erik is _here_. He’d been at school. He’d been training. He’d been on Artemis for ten years.

He’d been…

Erik frowns, fingers digging tiny notches in the mine floor. The eridium hums around him, almost purring. Alive. 

He’d been at school. Training. That same headache stretches over the back of his skull, but he does his best to shake it off. “This isn’t real.” He finds himself saying. 

His voice is quiet. Feeble. Hoarse, as though he’s been screaming for days. It _feels_ like he’s been running for hours. His entire body is sore, fatigued. There’s no way… there’s no way he’d come back to Nona. There’s no way that shadows can move, that shadows can carry the body of an Orcus officer, that _Ezra is still six_. 

Erik stays where he is, trapped like a rat. “This isn’t real,” he says again, his voice just a bit more confident. How can it be? How can _this_ be real? 

He wiggles backwards, dislodging his torso from the narrow tunnel. He rocks back onto his knees, ignoring the angry rumble of the mines as he shuts his eyes. “This isn’t _real._ ”

And again. “ _This isn’t real._ ” 

Behind his eyelids, the purple glow of eridium begins to fade. “This isn’t real.” He shouts, firmly. His voice echoes around him in a chorus, filling the tunnel and bouncing off each wall like a wayward ping pong ball. 

The tunnel begins to rumble. Shaking, violently, like someone’s picked it up and tossed it down a hill. Silt rains down on Erik’s shoulders but he remains where he is, breathing hard, eyes squeezed shut. “This isn’t real,” he says again, head throbbing. 

And even as the tunnel collapses around him, and Ezra’s voice screams, high and shrill, piercing through the dark, he repeats his mantra. “This isn’t real. This isn’t real. This isn’t real.”

  
  


* * *

  
  
  


He wakes up screaming. He can’t _move._

He’s drenched in sweat, his mouth dry, as if someone’s stuffed it full of cotton. Erik tries to sit up, but something cold is lashed across his forehead, and he breathes hard through his nose, small, helpless whimpers escaping him as he realizes he’s stuck.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” comes a voice from somewhere to his left. It’s a comforting voice. Familiar. “Deep breaths, Erik. You’re done. You’re done.” 

Erik’s eyes cut to the left, straining as far as they can given the limited movement of his head. A tall figure reaches to place a hand on his shoulder, and he tenses, clenching his jaw so hard he feels it pop.

“It’s me, Erik,” Says the figure, reaching up to undo the buckle keeping Erik’s head prone. “Jake, remember? We just met. You’re at the school. You’re safe.”

The buckle falls away from Erik’s head and like a fuse that’s just been put out some sort of exhaustion catches up with him. His head thumps against the back of the chair, barely registering the fact that Jake is slowly removing his shackles, freeing him from the confines of the chair. 

Erik’s mind feebly offers him a solution. _Fear tests_ , he remembers. His breaths slow, toes uncurling within his shoes. 

Jake’s face looks confused. Some mixture of anger, maybe, combined with awe and curiosity. Erik doesn’t want to ask, but Jake clarifies on it without hesitation. “How did you do it?” Jake asks. 

Erik shuts his eyes. He just wants to take a nap. A _shower_. 

“Do what?” He asks, his voice throaty and hoarse. 

He can’t see Jake, but he can hear the excitement in the doctor’s voice. “How did you come out of it so quickly? Did you cheat? Did you take another form of the serum before you came here?”

Erik cracks an eye open. “I was in there for hours, Jake.”

The doctor shakes his head.

“Five minutes,” he says. “You were under for _five_ minutes. That’s the fastest I’ve _ever_ seen, and I’ve been doing this for thirty years.”

Erik’s eyes are fully open now, brows tilted into a heavy furrow. “Five minutes?” He asks. 

The doctor nods. “Most are under for at least thirty on their first trial. At _least_.”

Erik wants to feel proud of himself, but all he can think about is his bed, his nice, fluffy pillow, and maybe even a glass of water to top it all off.

He gets out of his chair, legs shaky and unsure. “Sounds good,” he mumbles, and as he tracks towards the door, he catches his reflection in the big mirror.

His cheeks are flushed, eyes empty and glassy. 

And he swears, although he’d never admit it to anyone else, that he can see the Orcus officer standing in the corner of the room, outlined in purple and surrounded by shadows.


	6. you run with the wolves

There’s always some novelty in coming in contact with another bounty hunter. Most hunters are sequestered away to an assigned planet -- stuck in one place, patrolling the same atmosphere for as long as they choose to serve or until they’re ordered to move somewhere else. Erik’s been stuck on Pandora for five years -- and for the most part, it’s been fun. There’s a lot to do, money to be made, and nobody really bats an eye if you decide to gut someone for their pocket change. 

Point being, Erik hasn’t seen another bounty hunter since the year following his graduation. Not that he really wanted to, anyway, but one of the other perks of living on Pandora is that nobody really wants to come visit. Erik’s got the whole thing to himself. He’s sniffed out every nook, cranny, valley, and cavern that the wasteland that calls itself Pandora has to offer. 

He likes the fact that he can walk into just about any bar or tavern and hang out on his own without worrying about maintaining any sort of friendly conversation. Not that he doesn’t  _ like _ making friendly conversation, but sometimes a man just needs some personal time every now and then. Slaughtering bandits in droves at a time can be tiring on the mind and the body -- but it’s nothing that a pint of watered down rum can’t fix. 

And there are plenty of bandits to go around. Sure, some of the time he’s busy on an assignment, but the idle spaces between each bounty serve to be long enough and harsh enough that he’s got to wet his whistle somehow. Nobody’s going to miss a few Pandoran marauders that would sooner kill Erik himself than let him move about his business peacefully. And if he can get a handful of coin from it? 

Hey. Why not, right?

Plus, you know, it’s kind of why he’s here. The guild encourages him to clean out bandit camps, relocate innocent citizens into the leftovers and help gather people so they don’t have to strike out on their own. There’s more to Erik than just killing bandits -- although it’s quite fun to see them writhe and squirm after getting a taste of their own medicine -- he’s not a  _ total _ asshole. There are plenty of good people on Pandora. He’s happy to ensure that these bandit clans don’t overstep their boundaries.

But Erik’s blissfully alone. And he likes it that way. He makes easy conversation with the civilian population, chats up every bartender he meets, and on the few occasions he stretches his legs and goes off-world, he’s more than willing to introduce himself in full to everyone he meets. But there are times when he’s content to just  _ be _ . To watch the steady influx of customers, the small, weary smile on a bartender’s face when someone stuffs a couple wrinkled bills into the grimy tip jar. 

He’s more than happy to claim his spot at the bar, hunch over a mug of rum, and let the quiet relief of a job well done wash over him. Today had been a successful one -- he’d taken care of a bounty, swiping up the fingerprints and ID of a runaway Promethean killer. Some rogue chad who’d found it amusing to take crackshots at unsuspecting passerby from the roof of a nearby apartment complex. Erik had caught him, of course. But the guy had taken out a few kids on his little rampage -- and his wanted poster had read dead  _ or _ alive, soooo. 

By the time the dude’s body hit the ground, Erik could hear the sound of skags baying like bloodhounds beyond the nearest hill. Erik figured he’d let  _ them _ take care of the disposal.

All in all, a good day.

The bar in question isn’t in itself very remarkable. It’s on the smaller side, with a center-set wraparound bar, the bartender himself trapped within a four foot-by-four foot counterspace and serving to customers clustered around him on all sides. A couple vending machines buzz and whir in the corner and the idle chatter of the patrons is a welcome relief to Erik’s ears, achy and tired from being stuffed with earbuds from dawn to dusk. He’s nursing his second glass of rum -- if it can be called rum at all, anyway -- when the door to the tavern creaks open and the low light of the day turning to night slants across the floor, granted passage by whatever newcomer is checking in for the night. 

Erik thinks nothing of it. He’s got his back to the door, watching only as the bartender putters around, halfheartedly wiping down glasses and making small talk with the few drunkards paying him any mind at all. He’s on his second beer of the night -- normally he wouldn’t let himself get past one glass, but he’s tired and that Promethean had done a lot of senseless crying and begging and pleading for his life. 

It’s the second beer that nearly kills him. 

In a roundabout way, of course, because it’s not like he’s allergic to beer or anything. However, he  _ had _ been a notorious lightweight back at the academy and he’d never heard the end of it from the handful of friends he’d made throughout his years in the school. All he’d wanted to do was go out and drink and fly beneath the radar of all the snot-nosed prefects and their ass-kissing goonies, but his friends almost never let him join in lest the risk factor be too high -- alcohol goes right to Erik’s head, no matter how watered-down and piss poor it really is. Now, granted, Artemis had at  _ least _ been a far better manufacturer of fine wines and smooth tequilas than Pandora. Drinks on Artemis had been much…  _ richer _ . Not that Erik is much of a judge. 

Regardless, he’s already got a bit of drag in his gaze when that door creaks open behind him and it’s that drag that keeps him from turning around when the bartender tilts his head, brow knitting with something that looks just a touch like concern. Bars like this one -- tucked away in little towns, frequented by the same handful of people -- aren’t often dropped into by strangers. Travelers may pass through every now and then, like Erik himself, but this bar is one he’s been to a few times now. A couple months between each visit, sure, but it’s enough to keep the bartender in the loop. The only people that man ever sees are the people of the little shantytown village out back and the scatterings of tried-and-true Pandorans. Never bandits, and almost  _ never _ someone from the outside. 

It’s the tick in the bartender’s brow that gives him away. Despite the way Erik’s eyes seem slow to move, slow to meet the bartender in the middle, he can sense something like tension rising in the room. The chatter dulls to a low murmur and Erik can practically  _ feel _ the unease in the room. He straightens on his stool, brings his hands to rest atop the warped countertop. Nearly twenty years of experience and training are not lost on him, not even now when the taste of that bitter rum is lingering on his tongue. 

And then he feels it -- that strange sort of sensation he’s almost forgotten how to understand. Like a cold hand gripping the back of his neck, a finger pressed to his pulse, waiting to squeeze every last breath from his throat. He’s felt it only a handful of times -- not once since he’d left Artemis, not once since Hecate -- but as soon as it starts to become more of a comfort than an inconvenience he’s more confident than anything that he knows  _ exactly _ what it is. 

So when the gunshot blasts through the bar, Erik’s ready for it -- and his own resounding thunderclap as he disappears into a ghostwalk drowns out the startled cries of terror and the ear-shaking ring of a gun being fired in an enclosed space. 

He turns, the world slowing to a standstill around him as his entire body moves into something like hyperspeed. A peek over his shoulder -- a smoking bullet hole embedded in the wall right where Erik’s head would have been. A  _ perfect _ shot. That sensation of being held by the throat never dulls -- Erik can feel it as he careens towards the door in practiced movements, blasting past tables and chairs and startled patrons who aren’t used to being walked  _ through _ . He catches a flash of red through the blur of his vision, impaired by the ghostwalk, but the slow, easy breaths of the  _ other _ bounty hunter are all too clear to Erik’s now omnipresent ears. 

Breaths that never waver, even as Erik knits back together in the doorway behind him, reaching out just as his hand reappears and wrenching the other bounty hunter’s wrist up and behind his back. Erik’s voice is deadly calm as he leans down -- this hunter is shorter than him -- and growls into the hunter’s ear. “You run with the wolves,” he starts. 

The bounty hunter squirms and tenses, swinging a foot back to catch Erik in his knee. Erik grunts in response, swinging his other arm up and around and capturing the other man’s neck in a tight headlock. The two of them go sprawling backwards out of the door as Erik backpedals, using his height to his advantage as his limbs crackle with leftover energy. 

“You run with the  _ wolves _ ,” Erik tries again, only to let out a pained yelp when the man finally manages to dig an elbow back into the plane of Erik’s stomach. The pressure hurts, but it’s not enough to make him let go. A breath hissed through clenched teeth, the pair of them coming to an uncomfortable standstill in the dust just outside the bar, and Erik tightens his grip, bicep pulling at the fabric of his shirt as he puts all he can into the headlock. 

The man reaches up with his only free hand and claws at Erik’s forearm, kicking his legs and eventually going limp in an attempt to loosen the ghostwalker’s grip. It nearly succeeds -- Erik has to fall with him to keep from losing his hold, and in doing so he manages to roll the both of them into some sort of physical ultimatum. A tussle, a handful of sharp breaths and angry grunts, and three mouthfuls of dirt later, Erik’s finally got the other bounty hunter right where he wants him. 

The man in black is laid out beneath Erik, stretched long in the Pandoran dust, facedown with his chin pressed hard into the dirt. All of Erik’s weight is on top of him -- knees clamped on either side of the man’s ribs, feet locked around padded thighs to keep him in place. One hand remains on the other hunter’s back -- fingers wrapped tightly around a tanned wrist, the man’s own fist being pressed to that sweet spot just between his shoulderblades. Erik’s opposite hand is clamped around the back of the man’s neck -- he can feel the thud of the hunter’s pulse beneath his fingertips, the sweat dampening the short strands of black hair at his collar. 

One more time. 

“ _ You run with the wolves _ ,” Erik growls, angry and flustered and out of breath. 

And again, the man squirms. But this time he speaks -- his voice is low, gritty, raspy. Like two stones being rubbed against one another. “I’m not finishing that, Boone. Not for you.” His voice is muffled, face pressed to the dirt, but his tone is enough to convey his message to the ghostwalker above him. Erik’s fingers tighten around the man’s neck. 

“Who are you?” He concedes, bristling with unspent energy. 

The man beneath him stills, as if he’s just been slapped across the face. 

Erik can only watch as the man’s forehead drops to the dirt, no longer concerned with keeping his head up. He can’t move his arms, one of them twisted painfully behind his back and the under pinned under his own body weight. But even without seeing his face -- Erik can sense something that he might call exhaustion rippling through the frame of this bounty hunter, his fist finally loosening between his shoulders. 

Erik wants to let him go, to talk this out, but he doesn’t trust that way. Not after living on Pandora for five years. 

So he squeezes harder. “ _ Who are you? _ ” He nearly roars, his own heartbeat fast and frantic. 

He barely hears the man’s response over the pant and groan of his own breaths. But he catches it regardless, and his frown only deepens because of it. “You really don’t remember me, Boone?”

Shit. Oh,  _ shit _ . Erik still hasn’t seen the guy’s face clearly. First the ghostwalk, and then trapping him from behind, then the tussle, and now this -- the guy is facefirst in the dirt, talking through a mouthful of sand. Erik can’t remember someone just by looking at the back of their head.  _ Should _ he be able to? Oh, Saints, now he’s second guessing himself. It’s been five years since he graduated, right? This guy seems to be around his age, and he’s a bounty hunter, no less, so he must’ve graduated in the same class. 

Fuck, fuck, fuck, why can’t he remember?

His moment of indecision costs him -- he should’ve known better, he should’ve kept his grip tight -- but the bounty hunter beneath him had spent the same amount of time training and the same amount of time learning the same techniques. And Erik had graduated  _ last _ . So whoever he’s got pinned is a better fighter than him by default. By principle. 

Erik’s indecision costs him. The bounty hunter rolls towards the arm Erik’s got pinned behind his back, twisting and throwing all of his weight against Erik’s loosened grip. A sharp yelp escapes the ghostwalker as his knuckles come in contact with the sharp grit of the Pandoran sand, bits of fractured glass and crumbs of silt digging cuts into the crevices between each knuckle and fingerbone. The pain loosens his grip even further and soon he’s being knocked onto his back, all the breath escaping his lungs. In the space of a moment he’s gone from having the upper hand to every inch of him being squeezed with pressure as the other hunter settles all his weight against Erik’s upper body, effectively sealing off any attempts for Erik to stand up. 

The exact sort of hold Erik had subjected him to not moments before -- except now, Erik’s face-up, staring with a muted sort of horror at the frowning face of the other bounty hunter. The hunter -- an oculus, judging by the ruby red glint of his eye -- clamps both knees on either side of Erik’s ribcage and squeezes hard, one hand wrapping in a tight, unforgiving claw around the column of Erik’s neck. 

Up close, the hand around his neck notwithstanding, Erik can see each freckle dotted across the oculus’s face, the angry flush filling high cheekbones with a radiant pink hue. But it’s not these things that take Erik’s agency away -- it’s the deep, unforgiving scar stretching the length of the oculus’s features, spanning from just above his jaw and creeping diagonally across the bridge of his nose, up through his eye and into his eyebrow on the opposite side. It’s sunken, discolored, puckered in odd places and warped in others. Jagged, like someone had taken a serrated knife to the oculus’s face and let the Saints sort out the rest. 

But it’s the oculus’s eye that truly makes Erik’s blood run cold. Not the red one, of course, but the one that stares at him, milky white and colorless. It should’ve been the same crimson as its twin. But it isn’t. It just…  _ isn’t.  _

Erik lets out a breath, his own face going red as the oculus’s hand tightens like a vice around his airway. The scar on the oculus’s face warps and twists as a fury overtakes him, and all Erik can do is choke out a gasped, “ _ Rico? _ ” as his vision begins to dim around the edges. 

Rico’s lip curls at the corner, a sneer confirming Erik’s suspicions. His grip never loosens, fingernails digging tiny crescents into the skin above the ghostwalker’s pulse. “You only remember me when you see the scar, Boone?” This time it’s Erik’s turn to squirm, halfheartedly kicking his feet and scrambling to give his heels purchase on the ground below him. Another few moments of this and he’ll black out -- and he’s positive that Rico won’t miss the next time he pulls the trigger. 

So Erik does the only thing he knows how to do. 

He disappears. 

He pops out of existence, pulling apart at the seams, his own ears picking up the angry cries of the oculus as the space between Rico’s knees suddenly empties. Erik takes several gasping breaths, gulping in as much air as he can muster before he cracks back onto the physical plane a few meters away, giving himself enough space to move as he regains his composure. 

“Taking the coward’s way out, Boone?” Rico asks, voice deadly calm as he gets to his feet and turns to face the ghostwalker. His red eye glints like a ruby in the low light cast by Elpis. “That’s all you beshies are good for. Running  _ away _ .” His hand moves, almost too quickly for Erik to catch. But just as Rico knows all of Erik’s tricks, Erik knows Rico’s. Trained by the same teachers, molded by the same hands, living under the same roof for ten years. 

Erik can sense the dagger before it goes flying. Another crack and he’s moved himself another six feet away -- but the knife had been thrown in a curve, anticipating his movements, and he has to duck to keep it from shearing off his left ear. The silver glint of the dagger in the moonlight is followed shortly by the whistling  _ whoosh _ of it turning end over end before it buries itself hilt-deep in the dirt just behind Erik’s left shoulder. 

“What are you  _ doing, _ Morales?” He lifts his hands submissively, dropping low when Rico ducks his head and tilts into a charge. Erik wants to ghostwalk -- he  _ wants _ to -- but everything about him is burning. He’s already used it far too many times today. He feels like he might burst at the seams, every inch of him alive with silver arcs of electricity. He’s the center of a thunderstorm, charged with energy he can’t quite get rid of. 

But Rico seems to have no qualms about it. Erik’s breath is once more knocked out of him as Rico’s shoulder connects with Erik’s stomach, a spearing hit that’s hard enough and heavy enough to send the ghostwalker sprawling. Rico retains his own balance, backpedaling away and digging his heels into the sand as he unholsters his gun and holds it out in front of him, unwavering, the sight trained at that sweet spot right between Erik’s eyes. 

Erik scrambles onto the heels of his hands, breathing hard. There’s a reason why he’d graduated last. Because of this -- because he’s the one on the ground, and Rico’s the one with the fury in his eyes burning brighter than anything Erik’s ever seen before. Erik’s the one between the crosshairs. 

And then Rico stills -- a preternatural stillness, the sort of stillness trained into every single one of the students trained under the watchful eyes of the guild. Statuesque in nature -- not even his chest seems to move with his breaths, eyes unblinking as he glares down at the ghostwalker. 

“I’ve been waiting for this for a long time, Boone.”

Erik feels a tug in his gut -- his energy coming back to him, electricity crackling against the back of his neck. He might as well take the opportunity while he has it. His mouth curls into a determined grimace as he lifts an arm to cover his eyes. Feigning fear. Running away. It’s what he does best. 

A sound like a gunshot -- but it’s not a gunshot, is it? Once more Erik rips apart from the inside out. Trillions of atoms separating from one another and turning Erik into nothing more than a ghost of himself. He peels himself off the ground as Rico’s arm lowers and the oculus lets out a rough, almost anguished cry. 

And then he runs. Erik runs, and runs, and runs, until he can no longer feel where the air ends and he begins. He  _ has _ to put himself back together, or he’ll never be the same again. 

  
  



End file.
